Combining childhood vaccines at one visit is not safe? Wrong, wrong, wrong!

I sensed a disturbance in the antivaccine (i.e, the dark) side of the Force yesterday. No matter where I wandered online and on social media, I kept running into a new article, an article by Neil Z. Miller about vaccines. For example, the merry band of antivaccine propagandists over at Age of Autism seem to like Miller’s article very, very much. So did the vaccine truthers over at—where else?—VacTruth.org. I kept seeing it on Facebook and Twitter, too.

Even though the current vaccine schedule is safe and effective as well as evidence-based and the claim that we give too many vaccines too soon is an antivaccine myth, that doesn’t stop Miller from claiming otherwise in an article just published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (JPANDS) entitled Combining Childhood Vaccines at One Visit Is Not Safe. Now, the first thing I think whenever I see an article published in JPANDS is that it must be so horrible that no reputable journal would touch it with a ten foot cattle prod. After all, JPANDS is the house organ of a group, the Association of American Physicians and Scientists (AAPS), best known for its extreme right wing politics, its members’ belief that they are brave maverick doctors who don’t follow the “herd,” and its utter disdain for any evidence that conflicts with its ideology.
As hard as it is for me to believe, I first discovered the AAPS over ten years ago and was astonished at its embrace of antivaccine views, HIV/AIDS denialism, and other forms of pseudomedicine and medical conspiracy theories. Examples abound. Basically, the AAPS is known for being against vaccine mandates, against Medicare (calling it “unconstitutional”), and against any form of regulation of health care by government. It’s called public health programs “tyranny.” The AAPS has also published bad papers claiming to find that abortion causes breast cancer, has promoted the vile idea that shaken baby syndrome is a misdiagnosis for “vaccine injury,” supported HIV/AIDS denialism, and (of course!) done what all crank medical organizations like to do, attack evidence- and science-based medicine as placing unacceptable limits on physician autonomy. Perhaps my favorite example of AAPS crankery is when it published a blog post (now removed, no doubt in embarrassment) claiming that then-candidate Barack Obama was possibly “deliberately using the techniques of neurolinguistic programming (NLP), a covert form of hypnosis.” The AAPS doesn’t even limit itself to medicine in that it’s also published papers attacking anthropogenic global warming, as though physicians had the necessary expertise to judge the science in that field. Truly, the crank magnetism and arrogance of the AAPS know no bounds. If you don’t believe me, consider this. JPANDS has published articles by the father-son team of antivaccine “scientists,” Mark and David Geier.

We’ve also met Neil Z. Miller before. Well do I remember an article by him and co-author Gary S. Goldman published five years ago that resurfaces from time to time. Basically, it was an “analysis” purporting to show that infant mortality correlates with the cumulative number of doses of vaccine in the childhood vaccination schedule. Let’s just say Miller and Goldstein’s rationale, methods, and analysis were rather suspect. No, wait. Strike that. Let’s just say it was a giant, drippy, stinky turd of an article—and amateurish to bood—whose conclusions were not at all supported by the data or analysis. He and Goldman also teamed up for an equally inept attempt to show that more vaccination correlates with more hospitalizations and deaths. They failed.

So, given how much antivaccinationists like this latest article by Miller, combined with the abysmal (and well-deserved) reputation of JPANDS and Miller’s track record, I was not optimistic that this wouldn’t be more of the same. My pessimism was justified. The main difference is that this latest article is not an attempt at an original investigation, but rather an attempt at a systematic review. Unfortunately, in a systematic review, one is supposed to review the existing literature as comprehensively as one can, discussing its strengths and weakness, not cherry pick a few studies to misinterpret and cite one’s own “studies” far more prominently than they deserve. Let’s take a look.

You can tell from the abstract that this article is basically going to be a rehash of Miller and Goldman’s previous “analysis”:

Although health authorities including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) claim that childhood vaccines are safe and recommend combining multiple vaccines during one visit, a review of data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) shows a dose-dependent association between the number of vaccines administered simultaneously and the likelihood of hospitalization or death for an adverse reaction. Additionally, younger age at the time of the adverse reaction is associated with a higher risk of hospitalization or death.

Which is basically what Miller and Goldman tried, and failed, to show four years ago.

The first mistake Miller makes is the same mistake he’s made time and time again: Dumpster diving the VAERS database. Why do I call it “dumpster diving”? Easy. The VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) is a problematic database, whose contents are useful for a very limited range of analyses. However, it is also a public database that can be freely downloaded by anyone; so naturally it attracts antivaccine “scientists” like catnip attracts cats. As longtime readers of this blog and vaccine science advocates know, VAERS is a passive reporting system. Anyone can report a suspected vaccine injury to the database. You don’t have to be a medical professional to do it, and there doesn’t even have to be a plausible relationship between the vaccine and the suspected adverse reaction. Indeed, it’s long been known that vaccine litigation distorts the VAERS database, with plaintiffs’ attorneys encouraging their clients to report their children’s cases to VAERS. Consequently, VAERS cannot be relied upon for anything close to the true incidence of specific adverse reactions. If you don’t believe me, let me just mention once again that reports of vaccines turning people into The Incredible Hulk and Wonder Woman have been successfully entered into VAERS.

Why would the government want to set up a system like this? Simple. It’s an early warning system. Even though the database can be distorted and even though its contents are not a reliable estimate of the incidence of vaccine injuries, it’s still useful in that when scientists notice an uptick in the reporting of an adverse event due to a vaccine in VAERS it’s an impetus to study it more deeply and see if the increase is real.

Of course, at some level, Miller must know this, as he spends much of the first page trying to convince the reader that VAERS is valuable and citing CDC studies using VAERS data. (Of course, VAERS is valuable and useful, just not in the way Miller thinks it is.) First, Miller tries to convince us that adverse events are underreported in VAERS:

Since 1990, the VAERS database has received more than 500,000 reports of suspected adverse reactions to vaccines. Although this represents a large number of people who may have been hurt by vaccines, under-reporting is a known limitation of passive surveillance systems. This means that VAERS only captures a small fraction of actual adverse events. In fact, shortly after VAERS was established, a large vaccine manufacturer, Connaught Laboratories, estimated “about a 50-fold under-reporting of adverse events in the passive reporting system.”3 Perhaps 98% of all adverse reactions to vaccines are not included in the VAERS database, and up to 25 million U.S. citizens could have been adversely affected by vaccines in the past 25 years. This well-known disadvantage of a passive reporting system, as opposed to an active surveillance system in which medical workers are trained to systematically collect all cases of suspected adverse vaccine reactions, is rarely acknowledged by health authorities when vaccine safety is discussed.

A better way of looking at this would be that certain kinds of adverse events are underreported and certain others are likely to be massively overreported, thanks to the way lawyers petitioning the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program insist that their clients enter their suspected adverse reaction, no matter how implausible. Miller cites the Institute of Medicine’s report on vaccines to bolster his view, but this is what the IOM actually wrote:

Care must be taken in interpreting information from passive surveillance systems. The extent of underreporting cannot be known. Duplicate reports of the same event for the same patient are common and are not always easy to detect, making totals questionable. Medical information provided on reporting forms is often incomplete. In general, passive surveillance systems are useful in flagging potential problems and suggesting hypotheses. See Chapters 2, 10, and 11 for further discussion.

Which is exactly what I just explained above. The IOM also noted:

From a comparison of spontaneous reports with postmarketing surveillance data, the company estimates about a 50-fold underreporting of adverse events in the passive reporting system. The distribution of types of events, however, was found to be approximately the same; in both cases, the majority of reported events were local reactions or fever. The company has seen a marked decrease in adverse event reports since the inception of VAERS late in 1991, because physicians are now requested to send reports directly to the VAERS contractor.

Although 5% of reports were serious, including several deaths, CDC researchers concluded that “in our review of VAERS data, we did not detect any new or unexpected safety concerns for MMR vaccination in adults.”

Note the implication that the MMR vaccine is very dangerous. What Miller neglected to mention (almost as if he didn’t read anything more than the abstract) is that the medical records of patients suffering serious events were reviewed. Of the seven deaths, two were due to cardiovascular disease, one due to a drug overdose, one due to chronic preexisting myocarditis, one due to pulmonary embolus, one due to an arrhythmia. The last one was a patient who had had a renal transplant and was on immunosuppression who died of disseminated varicella. In other words, none of them appear to have been due to the MMR vaccine.

Next, Miller characterizes the LAIV3 study thusly:

Although 8.9% of reports were classified as serious (e.g., cardiovascular events, neurological debilities, and fatalities) CDC researchers concluded that “review of VAERS reports are reassuring, the only unexpected safety concern for LAIV3 identified was a higher than expected number of Guillain-Barré syndrome reports in the Department of Defense population, which is being investigated [sic].”

Note again how Miller tries to paint the LAIV3 as dangerous. This paper is actually a bit more nuanced. For one thing, the rate of serious adverse events reported was generally under 2 per 100,000 doses, which one would note if one reads the whole paper. Be that as it may, this paper only found a possible increased incidence of Guillain-Barré syndrome in the Department of Defense population, which is being investigated—which is exactly what VAERS is for: Early warning and hypothesis generation.

Finally, the last paper cited looked at intussusception after rotavirus. This one was interesting in that it looked at the number of days after vaccination that reports of intussusception were made and found a clustering between 3-6 days, which suggests that there might be a causal relationship based on what is known about intussusception and rotavirus. Also:

In summary, after distribution of 47 million doses of RV5 in the United States, we observed a persistent clustering of intussusception events during days 3 to 6 after the first-dose vaccination. When we combined all 3 doses of RV5, we estimated a small overall excess risk of ∼0.79 intussusception event for every 100 000 vaccinated infants. This level of increased risk in the United States would translate to 33 excess annual intussusception events after rotavirus vaccination with the coverage expected for a fully mature rotavirus vaccine program. This is substantially lower than the number of diarrhea hospitalizations prevented annually (∼40 000) since rotavirus vaccine introduction.

Emphasis mine. Risks versus benefits. Risks versus benefits.

Perhaps the most hilarious part of Miller’s paper is this:

These studies and others confirm that CDC considers VAERS an important post-marketing vaccine safety surveillance tool. Therefore, nobody should be swayed into believing the VAERS database does not contain immensely valuable raw data to be used by independent researchers conducting studies that evaluate the safety of U.S. mandated vaccines. For example, Mark Geier, M.D., Ph.D., independent researcher and former professional staff member at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), published several studies utilizing the VAERS database showing that vaccines containing thimerosal (mercury) significantly increase the odds of developing neurological disorders, including autism.

That’s right. Miller actually cited the Geiers as though they were real researchers and not antivaccine advocates pretending to do research. There’s a reason why I refer to anything the Geiers do with VAERS as “dumpster diving.” In fact, numerous studies have failed to find an association between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism or other neurological conditions.

All of this, of course, was just a lead up to Miller regurgitating his 2012 “study.” I deconstructed that incompetently performed study in detail back when it was originally published; so I don’t really feel the need to go into too much detail, given that you can simply click on this link if you want to go into the truly Oracian-length Insolent deconstruction. there were some truly hilarious abuses of statistics, a seeming fetish for trying to fit Miller’s data to a straight line in the absence of a plausible rationale why it should fit to a straight line, a failure to control for historical trends in infant mortality, and a failure to control for obvious potential confounders, such as birth cohort. It was truly a crappy “study.”

Of course, to Miller, his Truth is being suppressed by The Man:

Our study showed that infants who receive several vaccines concurrently, as recommended by CDC, are significantly more likely to be hospitalized or die when compared with infants who receive fewer vaccines simultaneously. It also showed that reported adverse effects were more likely to lead to hospitalization or death in younger infants.

Why is The Truth being suppressed by The Man? I think you know. It’s big pharma, of course:

These findings are so troubling that we expected major media outlets in America to sound an alarm, calling for an immediate reevaluation of current preventive health care practices. But 4 years after publication of our study, this has not happened. Could it be because, according to Robert Kennedy, Jr., about 70% of advertising revenue on network news comes from drug companies? In fact, the president of a network news division admitted that he would fire a host who brought on a guest that led to loss of a pharmaceutical account. That may be why the mainstream media won’t give equal time to stories about problems with vaccine safety.

Boo hoo.

I wonder if Miller knows just how pathetic it is to whine about how a paper he wrote four years ago failed to catch the attention of the press or the scientific community when it was originally published. I wonder if he knows just how much more pathetic it is that he published his complaint in JPANDS, one of the crankiest of crank journals. Obviously, it never occurred to Miller that maybe—just maybe—the reason that his “study” wasn’t picked up by major media is because it was a stinking heap of crap. Unfortunately, so far, it’s worked because memories are short and antivaccine activists don’t care about any evidence that doesn’t support their ideology. Hopefully, this post will serve as a reminder of why Miller’s study is not evidence that the current vaccine schedule is unsafe.

463 Comments

Every time I see some new piece of work from the same old pieces of work I wonder: Are there genuinely no honest arguments to support these alternative schedules and so on? You would have thought that at least one argument must have been made at some point in the long, sordid history of the antivax movement that was not blatantly dishonest. Surely not everybody in the world who questions vaccine orthodoxy is a pathological liar?

Except that with each passing example it looks more and more as if yes, they are all either liars or cultists.

There needs to be some kind of rules put in place to demand a certain standard of scientific accuracy for something to be allowed to use such a fancy and credible name like “Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons ” – especially since the name seems to imply that it is an official journal of ALL American Physicians and Surgeons (including our host!).

@Amethyst, the very first amendment guarantees the right to speak and even to lie. It’s a double edged sword in that way.

That said, I ponder many vaccines given at the same time. By many, I mean the military method, give every militarily important vaccine in one sitting. There has been *real* evidence based studies and opinions that *that* is excessive and may yield defective immunity. As in incomplete or non-existent protection for some of the pathogens being vaccinated against.
But there, we’re talking about a dozen vaccines or more at the very same hour.
I question the questioning, as I currently am healing a minor wound to the base of my thumb from a radiator reservoir hose clamp, while enduring tree pollination and the usual bathing of my entire body with various and sundry pathogens, but remarkably manage to both survive and not have a massive cytokine storm or autoimmune reaction.
As I’m also the guy who reacted within hours of receiving all of those military vaccines, to be fully recovered the next day and treat the rest of those who felt like crap, that’s saying a lot.

Each and every day, at a minimum, we’re exposed to hundreds of thousands of potentially pathogenic organisms and we successfully neutralize them.
Somehow, that got turned into hundreds of thousands of vaccines, in some warped minds.
The fact is, our immune system is a street brawler and extremely good at protecting us. It eliminates most pathogens in a way that our military can only dream of being nearly as effective as. Hell, if our military were even 10% as effective as our immune system is, the global war on terror would’ve been a distant memory.

On a tangent, courtesy of many intrusive memories, for the record, the Yellow Fever vaccine sucks. That one got me ill within a few hours.
Still, it beat the hell out of a case of Yellow Fever! Even today, if I were to be traveling into an endemic land, I’d take that shot. Hopefully soon, a superior vaccine that is in ongoing approval stages will replace it.

Which reminds me, I need to file for a copy of my old “shot card” from the Army. It’d be invaluable to my physician and my continued immunity to various and sundry significant pathogenic diseases.
I’m pretty sure I’m behind on a few by now. I did retire in 2010 and my last round of vaccinations was in 2005…
Yeah, I spent 5 years overseas. Coming home on leave wasn’t fun, with the TSA’s security theater and invasiveness, especially for those who were with US CENTCOM. Don’t get me started on how long the General spent on the telephone getting people off of the no-fly list, so that they could deploy…
Only to be confronted with re-entry onto the list when they completed their deployment.
But, I digress.

This means that VAERS only captures a small fraction of actual adverse events.

I am a bit puzzled by this assertion.
I understand the principle of the “tip of the iceberg” – only a fraction of the whole is observed – but I would expect the bias in reporting to be more severe toward mild adverse effects and less severe toward life-threatening adverse effects, simply because the former are easier to overlook and link to the suspected triggering event, compared to some reaction resulting in hospitalization.

The AVers’ beliefs seem to be the other way round. Some redness on the injection spot or a sore arm, reported every time, but someone turning blue and dropping dead? Nah, the doctor just push the corpse under the carpet and the family goes home without noticing that little Jimmy is not in the car anymore.

Yes, absolutely. I saw this previously in debates over cycle helmets – the obsessive-compulsives were suing figures for deaths and serious injuries that were grossly inflated, and defended this as “an estimate based on under-reporting”.

The level of under-reporting of deaths of children in advanced democracies is as close to zero as makes no difference. As we already know from Gardasil, the reality is the exact opposite. Claims of death are logged when the cause of death turns out to be drowning or road traffic collision.

The conclusion here is that “under-reporting” is a magic phrase used by the antivaxers to excuse data that conflicts with their narrative.

@Amethyst, the very first amendment guarantees the right to speak and even to lie. It’s a double edged sword in that way.

This is not a free speech issue, really. It is something masquerading as a medical journal when it clearly is not. There should be a set of criteria you need to fullfill to be allowed to make that claim.

Claims of death are logged when the cause of death turns out to be drowning or road traffic collision.

To play devil’s advocate, reporting any event is to be encouraged. Physicians are supposed to, no matter that.
In the cases you mention, narcolepsy (not sure the one with the flu vaccine has been confirmed) or, more often, fainting spells are not unheard of in correlation with vaccines (through, usually, fainting happens soon after the injection, not the day after). If it happens while you are driving…
It may lead to spurious correlations in a first pass (hence the importance of a rigorous statistical analysis to sort out the wheat from the chaff), but it’s better than missing some issue.

Now, if the event happened 3 weeks after the vaccination, and after a decade of vaccination there is a distinct lack of an epidemic of suicidal teenagers (more precisely – that the rate of suicide or traffic collisions is no different with or without/before or after vaccination), insisting that this couple of entries in VAERS is the tip of the iceberg is a bit silly.

To play devil’s advocate, reporting any event is to be encouraged. Physicians are supposed to, no matter that. In the cases you mention, narcolepsy (not sure the one with the flu vaccine has been confirmed) or, more often, fainting spells are not unheard of in correlation with vaccines (through, usually, fainting happens soon after the injection, not the day after). If it happens while you are driving…

Oh I agree. A friend’s son has narcolepsy which came on shortly after a vaccination, he is convinced they are related and there seems on the face of it to be some merit in that claim.

However, as we both know, the spurious correlations will likely overwhelm the real in the case of rare events.

So the right thing to do is to record everything, as you say, analyse rigorously, and make damn sure that the database has a big warning saying that correlation does not imply causation.

Oh, wait, it does say that, but these cranks persist in pretending otherwise.

Please can I stess that this organisation of weirdo’s has nothing to do with a far more sensible group the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, who exist to support the analysis of pharmaceuticals and biologics (as well as other forms of bioanalysis in drug development).

@Amethyst: IANAL, but in order for false/deceptive advertising laws to apply, JPANDS would actually have to advertise. I suspect that, as the house organ of AAPS, the primary distribution channel is through memberships in AAPS, similar to the relationship between Science and AAAS. They probably sell institutional subscriptions, but even there it’s hard to make the case that this is illegal as long as they clearly identify themselves as being affiliated with AAPS, which can demonstrate that they are an organization primarily for people who have the MD or similar degree.

AMAZING… I am so happy that everywhere you looked yesterday you kept running into this information! That’s how we know that YOU are going down the drain Orac. You are on the wrong side of history. You are a danger to children. Thank goodness the word is spreading so quickly, more quickly than most of us could even dream. Jump ship now, Orac. There is no doubt anymore… You’re pro-vaccine mantra is based on pure FRAUD and you have the audacity to call Dr. Wakefield a fraud? Please… Spare us.

AMAZING… I am so happy that everywhere you looked yesterday you kept running into this information! That’s how we know that YOU are going down the drain Orac. You are on the wrong side of history. You are a danger to children. Thank goodness the word is spreading so quickly, more quickly than most of us could even dream. Jump ship now, Orac. There is no doubt anymore… You’re pro-vaccine mantra is based on pure FRAUD and you have the audacity to call Dr. Wakefield a fraud? Please… Spare us.

That would be true if there were any evidence to back up the antivax claims of massive harm. However, as we see above, these claims of harm do not stand up to even cursory scrutiny.

So your differently-rational post basically says nothing at all about Orac, only about you. It tells us that your mechanism for telling truth from falsehood is completely dysfunctional. You cannot tell the difference between bullshit and fact, so you are not qualified to comment on anything.

@Eric: Well, I’m not arguing for going after them or anything within the current constraints “of the law” but rather that some new regulation is needed… Like some kind of ruling body to keep a watch over all so-called medical journals out there and make sure they are up to snuff.

… for just a split second after having read your first paragraph, Bacon, I was seriously considering that you were being serious and I had accidentally crossed over into Bizarro Respectful Insolence….!

Actually, Guy, there is so much information out there about the dangers of vaccinations. Perhaps you aren’t looking in the right places?

Over the past few months the videos and parental stories and observations are everywhere. So blessed to have the VAXXED team in place. Love them.

Here’s a few of the stories / videos that I have heard / watched just this morning.

– Baby dying from SIDS within two days of his 4 month vaccinations.

– Baby (who had previously had a seizure post-vaccination), was given vaccines in doctors office and had a grand mal seizure — in the doctors office!! Severe damage done. Doctor denied connection with vaccines. Criminals…

– A person in the military who had severe neurological problems within one week of “mandatory” vaccines.

Again, this was just today in the 20 minutes time that I had to spare to look through my fb feed.

I feel nothing but sorrow for you pro-vaxx nazis. It’s one thing to believe in vaccines, it’s quite another to ignore parental stories and to push so strongly for these unsafe, untested and dangerous vaccination schedules that we promote today. Tragic.

@DB: That was hysterical. But, for those innocents new to the blog, you might have wanted to add a sarcasm tag. After all, Joey might think you were serious.

@Joey: Yeah, and I’m going to believe all the UFO posts that are all over my FB posting, too. Apparently, UFOs are the cause of chemtrails because the aliens want to make us all docile and easy to conquer. That’s about as plausible as VAXXED is. Actually, it’s MORE plausible than VAXXED.

By the way: called to make my appointment for my MMR booster today. I’ll let you all know when I get it so we can monitor for severe affects and put that I’ve become Linda Blair in the VAERS database… 🙂

@MI Dawn: I guess it’s safe to say we run in different crowds. I don’t come across any UFO/alien posts. Although I do see some chemtrail posts on occasion (interesting topic with the admission that weather modification is happening).

While you’re at it MI Dawn, why don’t you add a chicken pox, Hep B, Prevnar , HiB, Flu, polio vaccine along with the MMR? (Or you pick the combination since the doctors just pick and choose as they please with zero regard to interactions)… Wouldn’t that be more like what an average baby would get at their “well-baby” visit? In fact, based on you being an adult (weight), Perhaps 3 of each vaccine should be given. But please, yes… Report back ASAP!

AoA has lately been featuring Sheila Ealey of VAXXED! fame. Interesting how they sidle up to minorities when it suits them.

In other news:
Orac’s critic ( Natural News) is hawking his book, Food Forensics, so it’ll become # 1 on book sites. Supposedly he’ll earn very little from its release but he is trying to promote the Revolution. In woo-ville, there’s always a revolution somewhere.

@ MI Dawn:

After receiving a flu vaccine in 2008, I fell down outside a restaurant whilst reading a menu in a Latin language and hurt my leg which has caused me distress periodically. I should sue.

Oh oops, it’s the anti-SB277 madness this year. SB277 goes into effect in July. There is a whole lot of frothing going on in the usual circles. Most notably, the first County Health Department to announce that they will be reviewing all medical exemptions filed in the county induced hysteria and vile attacks on the Health Officer who announced the review. The Health Officer has security guards at her office and at her home.

Oh and guess what? Ol’ Del Bigtree incited some of the outrage at one of the Q & A sessions following a Vaxxed screening. There has not yet been a rational discussion of the Santa Barbara Health Officer’s actions so no link.

I saw Miller’s post on Age of Autism and was hoping someone would write about it. Good job!

Several years ago I obtained from our local library a book by Miller, “Vaccines: Are They Really Safe & Effective.” For fun I obtained some of the articles cited in the book and compared them to what he wrote about them. Just one example:

Miller wrote: “In 2000, a new study in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics confirmed earlier findings that children who received DPT or tetanus vaccines are significantly more likely to develop a ‘history of asthma’ . . . than those who remained unvaccinated.”

From the actual article: “The odds of having a history of asthma was twice as great among vaccinated subjects than among unvaccinated subjects (adjusted odds ratio, 2.00; 95% confidence interval, 0.59 to 6.74).” (Eric L. Hurwitz, DC, PhD, Hal Morgenstern, PhD (2000 Feb). “Effects of diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis or tetanus vaccination on allergies and allergy-related respiratory symptoms among children and adolescents in the United States,” Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics, Volume 23, Issue 2, Pages 81-90)

For those unschooled in statistics, a confidence interval of 1 means no difference between the groups. A number below 1 would mean that the unvaccinated had higher incidence of disease and, obviously, a number above 1 would be the vaccinated had the higher incidence. When a confidence interval’s range contains both and is as wide as this one, it means that any finding could be solely due to random chance, that is, not statistically significant. Either Mr. Miller just doesn’t understand research methods and statistics or . . . In any case, this study clearly does not remotely show anything “significantly more likely.” If you don’t believe me, the study authors’ own conclusion is: “Although it is unlikely that these results are entirely because of any sources of bias, the small number of unvaccinated subjects and the study design limit our ability to make firm causal inferences.” The conclusion should have simply read the results were inconclusive. Claiming that they can’t make “firm causal inferences” would be like tossing a coin a couple of times and claiming one couldn’t make a firm causal inference as to the coin being balanced or not.

I found similar problems with other articles cited by Miller. In addition, he often cited second-hand sources, not bothering to go to the original studies.

However, it doesn’t surprise me that Age of Autism, the unscience, illogical, lack of common sense website, would post Miller. It is as if someone posted 2 + 2 = 5 and a commenter said: “thank you. at last someone who knows the truth despite what the global conspiracy of egg-headed university professor claim in order to see their books. Oh, by the way, you do agree that the shortest distance between two points is by zigzagging?

The first author agrees and so is formed a new website of mutually reinforcing morons.

In an article posted by AOA on June 13, “The Trauma of Orlando,” it stated: “We’re an autism-centric news site. But I see a thread connecting the mass shootings that occur all too often and the autism epidemic. Shots. With bullets. Shots. With syringes.”

Really! Even if there wasn’t overwhelming evidence that vaccines don’t cause autism, the people giving vaccines do it to save lives while the shooter in Orlando’s sole intent was to take lives. AOA just doesn’t know where to draw the line, when to just plain SHUT UP!

@Amethyst, Eric Lund:
Sounding almost like a case for trademark law, which does in fact have to deal with deliberate attempts to create confusion in the marketplace. Perhaps the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists could sue the Association of American Physicians and Scientists for trademark infringement.

Of course, that’s not likely to work; not the least of the issues with the idea is that trademarks are the form of IP law that you have to actively enforce in order to maintain the rights to continue enforcing them, and they’ve been around for at least ten years. But trademarks do exist to prevent people from deliberately creating confusion in a field.

@MI Dawn: As it happens, I got a DTaP booster during my visit with my PCP this morning. They handed me a sheet listing, among other things, possible side effects (including estimated probability of occurrence) and medical contraindications, and I signed a piece of paper saying that I had read the sheet. No side effects so far, though as I write this it hasn’t been two hours yet.

@Jenora: An additional problem in this case is that there are only so many possible TLAs and AFLAs, so duplicates are inevitable. For instance, to me APS normally means American Physical Society, but I have heard of at least one other organization with those initials. Even within a field, there can be duplicates: in my line of work GSE can mean either Ground Support Equipment (used with a space flight mission) or Geocentric Solar Ecliptic (a coordinate system). So it would be hard to defend a TLA or AFLA as a trademark.

@Eric Lund: I don’t remember if I’m due for DTaP yet or not. I need to check my records. If I am, I’ll ask to have that added to the mix. What the heck, why not. Then I can post to VAERS about my horribly sore arms (and, if past experience is correct), mild fever, and muscle aches. Flu vaccine is offered at work in the fall, so I’ll get that then.

Sorry guys… You lose the argument every single time when you fail to address the topic of toxic chemicals being injected into babies… Then, you laugh at and suggest it’s the same idea when you (a full grown adult) gets one vaccine vs a 10 lb baby getting 5 vaccines @ one time. Seriously, get some help geniuses.

@Eric Lund:
Hence why I said that the fact nobody had done anything for the last ten years was the least of the problems with the idea. It wasn’t really a serious suggestion; more a mention that there are some branches of law that are set up to deal with this sort of vague case of deliberate confusion.

Joey: “Actually, Guy, there is so much information out there about the dangers of vaccinations. Perhaps you aren’t looking in the right places? ”

Oh do please share where the “right places” are located! We would love to learn from your vast experience in science and statistics. It is quite obvious that you know the difference between “anecdote” and “data.”

@Joey: You’re anecdotes are about as meaningful as mine are. I’ve been in the military and received multiple shots (anthrax, smallpox, yellow fever, etc) with no major adverse effects (beyond some injection site soreness). Both of my children are fully current on their vaccines and get a flu shot each year as soon as it comes out. No adverse reactions at all. So why don’t we just stop with the anecdotes and actually use data to back up our claims, hmm?

My last DTaP booster caused bruising on my head. I tripped over my feet and banged my head on the door. Obviously, if not for the booster, I would have never been in the Dr.’s office and would not have tripped. Maybe I should put that in VAERS.

Studies have found that serious conditions are often reported to VAERS and the people reporting them are often lawyers, hoping to document the parent’s suspicion and that a subsequent CDC investigation will bolster their case. VAERS allows anyone to report what they suspect is a connection between a vaccine and some adverse reaction. However, as Neil deGrass Tyson said on the last episode of the recent remake of the Cosmos series: “just because you believe something, doesn’t make it true.” Most VAERS reports, following investigation, are found to not indicate vaccines as causative. Some VAERS reports have the reporting party giving names such as MIckey Mouse, etc. Anyone can, unscreened/unfiltered, submit a report to VAERS.

@ Wzrd1

You write: “That said, I ponder many vaccines given at the same time. By many, I mean the military method, give every militarily important vaccine in one sitting. There has been *real* evidence based studies and opinions that *that* is excessive and may yield defective immunity. As in incomplete or non-existent protection for some of the pathogens being vaccinated against.”

I remember eons ago lining up to receive all the vaccinations, including cholera and plague, etc. That night I couldn’t sleep because both arms were sore and I had a mild fever. I took two aspirins and was fine after awhile.

First, “opinions” have NO credibility. Yes, studies have found that SOME vaccines when given with others lead to a lesser development of immunity. Most of these studies were either combined in one vaccine or given in the same arm. When given in one arm and a leg, for instance, for some reason beyond my understanding, immunity was achieved. However, the Advisory Committee on Immunizations of the CDC is completely aware of this and the vaccine schedule takes this into account. However, sometimes more vaccines are given for catch-up, and the combination may lead to a slightly reduced level of immunity to some of the diseases; but immunity all the same and, of course, the kids will receive boosters.

In 2010 we had 10 deaths in California due to whooping cough. The infants either had been too young to be vaccinated or only received the first shot. The report explained the importance of cocooning, those around the infant being vaccinated or having had the disease. I belonged to an inner city YMCA where many mothers brought their infants in strollers while they worked out. Since I probably had whooping cough as a child, had all the childhood diseases; but couldn’t know for sure since my parents were long gone, I didn’t want to risk infecting some innocent child, even though the likelihood was extremely small; but since I believe in vaccines, I phoned my health plan and asked if I needed an appointment to get a booster. Nope, just go to nurses station with ID. In my car and within an hour of reading newspaper article I was vaccinated. I believe in community. Unfortunately, many antivaccinationist parents believe they live in some isolated world with no responsibility for other children. I wonder how they would feel if their unvaccinated child got some serious disease from another unvaccinated child who had recently traveled abroad with his/her parents?

Neil Z Miler does not have an MD nor PhD from any accredited university.

Some of you are having trouble making sense of some really easy concepts here. I suppose if my neighbor eats a peanut and reacts by swelling up and is unable to breathe… That’s anectdotal too? We need the data that supports the idea that peanuts can trigger an allergic reaction. GIVE ME THE DATA… I can’t see what’s staring me right in the face. Lol. Baby gets 6 vaccines, baby dies the next day. Baby gets 6 vaccines, baby has a grand mal seizure a minute later. What’s so hard to understand? You really need extra data to support that link? Too many flu shots for you guys over the years. Stop now before it’s too late.

a review of data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) shows a dose-dependent association between the number of vaccines administered simultaneously and the likelihood of hospitalization or death for an adverse reaction.

No, it doesn’t, for a couple of reasons. First, you have to control for confounding variables. That entails actually investigating the reports and looking at medical records to confirm whether or not the reported AE is actually caused by the vaccine or something else.

Second, you have no denominator. Miller is forgetting (or intentionally leaving out) all of those people who get vaccinated who do not have an AE. Suppose you have 1,000 people who get the DTaP, HepB, and polio vaccines all at the same visit, of which 10 have an AE that is reported to VAERS. Then you have 20 people who get only one of those vaccines at the visit, 5 of whom have an AE that is reported to VAERS. Looking only at the VAERS reports, you’d think that people who have multiple vaccines in the same visit suffer more AEs. But the 5-vaccine recipients represent only 1% of the total population that got 5 vaccines at the same visit, while the 1-vaccine recipients represent a whopping 25% of the total population that got only 1 vaccine.

That’s a very simplistic example, but it very quickly shows how Miller cannot make the claims he makes.

I suppose if my neighbor eats a peanut and reacts by swelling up and is unable to breathe… That’s anectdotal too?

Think of it this way. Your peanut-allergic neighbor eats some chicken and reacts by swelling up. Now, you might conclude that he is also allergic to chicken, completely missing the fact that before the chicken, he had some salad that had a peanut-based dressing on it.

I wonder how they would feel if their unvaccinated child got some serious disease from another unvaccinated child who had recently traveled abroad with his/her parents?

Most likely, they would be happy, thinking that their child now has natural immunity. The better question to ask is, how would they feel if their unvaccinated child were infected with a VPD from some other unvaccinated child and suffered serious, permanent sequelae as a result (e.g., deafness, blindness, encephalopathy with permanent intellectual damage, death, etc.).

Joey, I received a yellow fever shot and immediately got up from the chair and exited the clinic as the parking meter was running out on vehicle. I was struck by a car. To review — I get the shot, I walk outside less than a minute later, and I am struck by a car.

The following week I received another immunization, this one for typhoid. Same clinic, same doctor, same chair. However, upon exiting the clinic, I did not get struck by a car.

Should we therefore conclude that yellow fever immunization causes people to be hit by cars? And that typhoid fever immunization does not?

“Actually, Guy, there is so much information out there about the dangers of vaccinations. Perhaps you aren’t looking in the right places?
Here’s a few of the stories / videos that I have heard / watched just this morning.
– Baby dying from SIDS within two days of his 4 month vaccinations.
– Baby (who had previously had a seizure post-vaccination), was given vaccines in doctors office and had a grand mal seizure — in the doctors office!! Severe damage done. Doctor denied connection with vaccines. Criminals…
– A person in the military who had severe neurological problems within one week of “mandatory” vaccines.
Again, this was just today in the 20 minutes time that I had to spare to look through my fb feed.
I feel nothing but sorrow for you pro-vaxx nazis. It’s one thing to believe in vaccines, it’s quite another to ignore parental stories and to push so strongly for these unsafe, untested and dangerous vaccination schedules that we promote today. Tragic.”

Unfortunately Babies die from SIDS. In one reported case, the father took his infant in for vaccinations, the wait was too long, and he decided to come back another time. Tragically, the infant died that night from SIDS. If the infant had been vaccinated, it would have been difficult to not believe the vaccines caused it. This is the logical fallacy of post hoc ergo prompter hoc. After something so the something cause it. Unfortunately, there are many “somethings” that precede an event. In 1976 a man in Pittsburg got the swine flu vaccine and had a massive coronary. Newspapers played it up, vaccine caused death. Later, it was found the man had had several heart attacks, was in terrible shape, and having the heart attack at that specific time, it probably would have occurred anyway. The later Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago went in for his annual physical. His doctor pronounced him healthy. While getting dressed he had a massive coronary and died. I guess something in the exam did it, taking a little blood for blood test, taking his blood pressure. Well, whatever killed him, I think it best we all avoid going to doctors.

Babies have seizures, especially febrile seizures; but even grand mal seizures, without any vaccinations. Again post hoc ergo prompter hoc.

You write: “Sorry guys… You lose the argument every single time when you fail to address the topic of toxic chemicals being injected into babies… Then, you laugh at and suggest it’s the same idea when you (a full grown adult) gets one vaccine vs a 10 lb baby getting 5 vaccines @ one time. Seriously, get some help geniuse.”

First, thimerosal based on numerous studies done by different researchers on different populations in several different countries found NO association between thimerosal and autism. In fact, the small amounts of mercury in vaccines was less that what one would get from eating fish once weekly and numerous other sources. Also, the EPA safety level was based on numerous studies of what was a safe dose, then they divided it by 10 and then by 10 once more, so even if the total mercury from all the vaccines up to six months slightly exceeded this level it was still almost 1/100th the actual safety level. And the total through age 6 months wasn’t given all at once, whereas the EPA level was per dose. And thimerosal has been removed from all childhood vaccines except the flu vaccine and thimerosal-free flu vaccine can be obtained; but the amount from the one vaccine is so miniscule as to not count. Keep in mind that our bodies are miraculous machines that can protect us against many problems. Since mercury levels were exponentially higher eons ago, bacteria developed ways of coping which we have genetically inherited, including excreting, sequestering, and transforming to less toxic.

As for aluminum, infants get far more from breast feeding or formula. Aluminum is one of the most common elements in the environment, in the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breath, and through small cuts in our skins. The miniscule amounts in vaccines add almost nothing to what we get on a daily basis. And, again, our bodies as miraculous machines, deal with it.

As a senior citizen, a vegan, and a blood donor, I take a daily iron tablet. But if I swallowed the entire bottle I would be in trouble. I also take one baby aspirin a week and sometime a couple of regular aspirins if I have a headache. If I took the entire bottle I would die a rather unpleasant death, So, iron is something used by our bodies; but aspirin is not; yet small amounts of either can be beneficial; but large amounts dangerous.

As for 5 vaccines at once for a 10 lb baby. Have you any idea how many potentially dangerous microbes an infant is exposed to on a daily basis? Fully functioning microbes. Vaccines contain killed microbes or attenuated (significantly weakened) microbes. Our immune systems are designed to deal with 10s of 1,000s of microbes on a daily basis, A few killed or attenuated ones pose no problem. I actually have written an article on this subject with an extensive reference list.

Wow, playing the Nazi card. You antivaccinationists just don’t know where to draw the line. Having been born at the end of World War II and read extensively everything from biographies of Hitler to just about everything on the Holocaust, including papers by Holocaust deniers, people like you, playing the Nazi card, both show your immense ignorance while insulting the suffering of the victims of the Nazis. I have NO problem with your antivaccinationist beliefs as I know lots of people with deficient understanding of science and logic; but i find you more than despicable when you start calling people Nazis. My father’s generation fought those bastards and I grew up knowing a number of Concentration Camp survivors and American soldiers who freed the Camps.

I know Orac doesn’t like it when comments invoke personal attacks; but YOUR ARE DESPICABLE!

I wonder how they would feel if their unvaccinated child got some serious disease from another unvaccinated child who had recently traveled abroad with his/her parents?

Most likely, they would be happy, thinking that their child now has natural immunity. The better question to ask is, how would they feel if their unvaccinated child were infected with a VPD from some other unvaccinated child and suffered serious, permanent sequelae as a result (e.g., deafness, blindness, encephalopathy with permanent intellectual damage, death, etc.).

Yes, possibly they would be glad their child now had natural immunity, that is, if, for instance with measles, they didn’t have to watch the week’s suffering with high fever, intense itching, and anorexia and if they didn’t mind the kid missing a week’s school and having to miss a week’s work to take care of the child.

And that assumes the kid didn’t end up being one of 50,000 hospitalized per year from measles or worse, as you mentioned, one of the up to 2,000 with a seizure disorder, mental retardation, deafness, or blindness.

And the above just one of the vaccine-preventable diseases. Add them all up, not a pretty picture.

I see our troll has gone for the toxins gambit (#34), mistaking “data” for the plural of “anecdote” (#19), and post hoc ergo propter hoc (#42). Also, he seems to consider Facebook a reliable source of news.

What we should all be demanding then, of course, is that a vaccinated vs unvaccinated study be done, right? Too bad everyone on your side is so afraid of that. I can’t tell if some of you truly believe what you are saying… That we can’t assume anything about a grand mal seizure the same day as a vaccination? Really? And then we have a moron trying to argue getting hit by a bus (because somehow that is similar to a physical reaction to a vaccination). Wow! Thank goodness you guys are becoming more and more irrelevant. 🙂 Please I beg of you… go off and get your 10,000 vaccines (or 100,000 if you please). Report back.

What we should all be demanding then, of course, is that a vaccinated vs unvaccinated study be done, right? Too bad everyone on your side is so afraid of that.

Afraid? Bullshit. The problem with a vaccinated vs. unvaccinated study is very simple and very obvious: it is unethical to deliberately withhold vaccines in order to test a hypothesis that is contradicted by high quality epidemiological evidence.

There are vaccinated vs. unvaccinated comparisons available from communities with an ideological opposition to vaccines. The Followers of Christ for example, who had all the benefits of modern sanitation but eschewed medicine including vaccines, experienced very high infant mortality rates.

There are also cohort studies which can be used to assess specific claims of the antivax crowd. Example: Japan dropped MMR in favour of separate vaccines. No effect whatsoever on any measurable outcome. Example: thimerosal was removed from virtually all vaccines on the schedule. No effect whatsoever on any measurable outcome.

So if you want this study we’re supposed to be afraid of you need to do two things:

1. Come up with a compelling reason for doing it – i.e. some solid data that undermines the complete absence of any correlation between vaccination and ASD diagnosis in any country in the world. There are by now some hundreds of studies in dozens of countries covering tens of millions of children, not one of which shows any reason to do this test. The reckons of antivaxers are not and never will be a good reason to spend a single dollar on a test of any kind.

2. Come up with an ethical protocol. That will be, I venture to suggest, a major challenge for you.

I can’t tell if some of you truly believe what you are saying…

Sure, because it is inconceivable to you that anybody would not buy into the cult of antivaccination. As you should have realised by now, it is possible for highly intelligent and articulate people to read the same facts you read (and indeed the same non-facts from the antivaxers) and not be persuaded.

We engage with people like you because we think that it is important to understand the climate of fear and unwarranted doubt about vaccines. Antivaxers almost to a man and woman accuse anybody who does not drink the antivax Kool-Aid of being a pharma shill. We, by contrast, note a small number of conflicted individuals who are profiting handsomely from their anti-science, pro-disease advocacy, but most of the antivax movement consists of people who are trying to do the best for their children but have been cynically manipulated by the cult of anti-vaccination. A cult which has existed for as long as vaccines have.

The purported dangers change, the purported mechanisms of risk change, but one thing remains constant: it’s always the vaccines. It always was, it always will be. Precious bodily fluids and such.

Please I beg of you… go off and get your 10,000 vaccines (or 100,000 if you please). Report back.

Here is what Dr. Offitt actually said:

Studies on the diversity of antigen receptors indicate that the immune system has the capacity to respond to extremely large numbers of antigens. Current data suggest that the theoretical capacity determined by diversity of antibody variable gene regions would allow for as many as 109 to 1011 different antibody specificities.38 But this prediction is limited by the number of circulating B cells and the likely redundancy of antibodies generated by an individual.

A more practical way to determine the diversity of the immune response would be to estimate the number of vaccines to which a child could respond at one time. If we assume that 1) approximately 10 ng/mL of antibody is likely to be an effective concentration of antibody per epitope (an immunologically distinct region of a protein or polysaccharide),39 2) generation of 10 ng/mL requires approximately 103 B-cells per mL,39 3) a single B-cell clone takes about 1 week to reach the 103 progeny B-cells required to secrete 10 ng/mL of antibody39 (therefore, vaccine-epitope-specific immune responses found about 1 week after immunization can be generated initially from a single B-cell clone per mL), 4) each vaccine contains approximately 100 antigens and 10 epitopes per antigen (ie, 103 epitopes), and 5) approximately 107 B cells are present per mL of circulating blood,39 then each infant would have the theoretical capacity to respond to about 10 000 vaccines at any one time (obtained by dividing 107 B cells per mL by 103 epitopes per vaccine).

At no point did he ever suggest 10,000 vaccines. All he said was that based on the antigen load in vaccines, there is no realistic prospect of overwhelming the immune system of a baby. There is a safety factor of several orders of magnitude. In fact, a single breastfeed contains more antigens than the entire vaccine schedule.

And it is this rampant dishonesty in representing the reality-based view of vaccines that marks the antivaccine movement out as a dangerous predatory cult.

Yes, possibly they would be glad their child now had natural immunity, that is, if, for instance with measles, they didn’t have to watch the week’s suffering with high fever, intense itching, and anorexia and if they didn’t mind the kid missing a week’s school and having to miss a week’s work to take care of the child.

I doubt that dealing with the normal course of the illness, sans serious complications, would make them question their anti-vaccine stance. I mean, hell, there are people who actually advocate measles teas and pox parties. Their child’s suffering is a small price to pay for their own “brave” stance against vaccines.

Dorit [email protected]: More importantly, the real question to ask is: How many babies had seizures or died in the week before vaccination? Cos if it’s about the same number as the week after then it ain’t the vaccines doing it, but something else.

All of which is certain to whoosh straight over our Doctor Joey’s head like a rocketship to Mars.

By the way, my son had a grand mal seizure about two weeks after his MMR vaccine. Now, tell us: was it from the vaccine or from dehydration from the severe gastrointestinal illness he had been suffering from for a few days?

I did a quick search in VAERS and came across this report. A 3-month-old girl received DTaP, pneumococcal, and polio vaccines. 18 days later, she died.

Now, our friend Joey would conclude from such a simplistic search that the vaccines killed this little girl. But, if we look into greater detail, we find that she died due to blunt trauma to the head. The car she was in was involved in an accident, and she was ejected from the car. Not all VAERS records have this level of detail available, and so, someone like Joey who doesn’t bother thinking more deeply than their preconceived notions that vaccines are the ultimate evil would incorrectly blame vaccines for this (and other) deaths and adverse outcomes.

Oh, and just as an addendum to my last comment, Joey might be interested in this little bit from VAERS:

Caveats: DISCLAIMER: VAERS staff at CDC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) follow up on all serious adverse event reports to obtain additional medical, laboratory, and/or autopsy records to help understand the circumstances. However, VAERS public data do not generally change based on the information obtained during the follow-up process. There are limitations to VAERS data. A report to VAERS does not mean that the vaccine caused the adverse event, only that the adverse event occurred sometime after vaccination. Read more about interpreting VAERS data: More information.

Studies have already been done, numerous ones, vaccinated vs unvaccinated to demonstrate no positive significant correlation between vaccines and the entire list of injuries, illnesses, and disorders that your crowd claims is due to medicine. You simply ignore those studies because everyone who proves you wrong is part of “the conspiracy.”

Your allegory sucks too, by the way. If someone swelled up after eating peanuts, yes a doctor (I imagine you see a naturopath) would look at peanut allergies. However, if the tests came back negative, the doctor would also look at other potential causes. In your mind, NO! ITS PEANUTS I DONT CARE WHAT THE TEST SAYS IT HAS TO BE PEANUTS!

A final point, sad but worth noting, is that an individuals health is subject to random chance, complete and utter chaos. We can find contributing factors to what cause some disorders, cancers, etc, but there’s a randomness to it that is completely unexplainable. It stinks, and the knowledge that we cannot completely control the situation is what drives many parents to claim vaccine-injury. It can be much harder for a grieving mother and father to realize their child was just…the tragic result of a one in one million chance of something occurring, or the chance of iheriting a severe genetic disorder.

Joey: “Sorry guys… You lose the argument every single time when you fail to address the topic of toxic chemicals being injected into babies… ”

Well I for one am against toxic chemicals sickening our precious children.

“During the course of virus replication, many viral components as well as by-products of viral replication accumulate in the cell. These are often cytotoxic (e.g., Vaccinia virus in HeLa cells). The molecular mechanism of these toxins is not known in most cases. Only gross morphological defects can be observed generally. Some examples are:

@Joey
A, that familiar smell of old bullshit warmed over once again … I just can’t get enough of it.

there is so much information out there about the dangers of vaccinations

Not information. Stories: yes. Lies: galore. But not what I would consider ‘information’. Yes, children sometimes do fall sick or even die shortly after a vaccination. That’s called (and let me say it slowly, because I know you’re unfamiliar with the term) sta-tis-ti-cal pro-ba-bi-li-ty. It has to do with numbers. Scary stuff, eh?
When American children receive, say, 12 vaccinations during their first year (1 per month), and you have some 24,000 infant deaths per year (2,000 per month), then on average, at least 65 of those children die within 24 hours after vaccination, 130 within two days, and so forth. Every month again. Which means that every year, 12×65=780 children die immediately after vaccination — without there being any link between the vaccination and the demise of the child. So no, stories of children dying shortly after vaccination are not proof of the dangers of vaccines whatsoever.

Actually, if you look at infant mortality on a month-by-month basis, you will see that the numbers are at their peak in the perinatal period (so before any vaccination), and very quickly decline in subsequent months. If vaccination would exact a significant death toll (and even a hundred annual vaccine-related deaths in US the would show up clearly with these relatively small numbers), one would expect to see a rise in child mortality as the cumulative number of vaccinations administered rises — or at least one would expect to see less of a decline after the first few months.

And of course these statistics apply not just to mortality, but also to morbidity (children just getting sick or suffering from seizures etcetera). Every year, literally many thousands of American children will have some sort of health issue right after a vaccination — without the vaccination having anything to do with it.

the topic of toxic chemicals being injected into babies…

Oh dear … please, someone must have told you that the vast majority of those “toxic chemicals” are naturally present in the body of even infants, and in much larger quantities than in a vaccine? And that the chemicals not normally present in the body are not toxic by any standards? You appear to be very ill-informed…

Anyway, I’m not under the illusion that you will even take these things seriously — you sound like a religious fundamentalist, who will stick to his erroneous conviction even if the truth bit him in the ass and chewed it right off.

@has (#58) What in the world? Tuskegee experiment? WOW! I’m going to give you a huge LOL on that one! There are many parents who would willingly (and happily) allow their children to be unvaccinated. More and more each day, in fact. So, go away with the Tuskegee experiment bs. For the record genius the experimentation is done by the pro-vax nazis. Let’s not twist this around.

Oh, I see… I didn’t realize that there were tests that were being done by doctors (after a possible vaccine reaction), where the tests would come back as either a vaccine reaction or not. (ie like a peanut allergy test in your post). Please advise the name of all those tests being done so that I can pass them along to all the vaccine injured children’s’ parents. Thanks in advance …

Joey @70: In case you are unfamiliar with the phrase “double blind” it means that neither the study subject nor their doctor knows if they received the treatment or not.
So if a parent signed their child up for this ‘trial’ you are suggesting, they have no control (or knowledge) over if their child were actually to be vaccinated or not.

And here’s the really extra scary part about that: what if an unvaccinated child comes down with, say, measles, but their parents and doctor don’t know if they’ve been vaccinated or not? At the very least that would delay treatment.

Modern medical ethics say clearly that this study can not be done. Period. It is far too dangerous to the unvaccinated children. Because they could become sick, be disabled or die from vaccine-preventable diseases.
It’s just like how you can’t do a study on throwing people out of a plane with or without a functioning parachute.

So, Joey, what is your solution?
Change the standard vaccination schedule (for the US)?
Change what vaccines are on the standard childhood schedule (for the US)?
End childhood vaccinations (in the US)?
End childhood vaccinations (worldwide)?
End all vaccinations for everyone?

So, Joey, what is your solution?
Change the standard vaccination schedule (for the US)?
Change what vaccines are on the standard childhood schedule (for the US)?
End childhood vaccinations (in the US)?
End childhood vaccinations (worldwide)?
End all vaccinations for everyone?

You are probably correct in the sense that many who are concerned about vaccine safety may not be interested in such a study as the dangers of vaccinating would be too high. Instead, maybe just look at all the very healthy unvaccinated chiropractors kids. That pretty much sums it up right there as you will find them to be much healthier than the regular population (vaccinated kids). Easy.

Yes, change the schedule. Yes, drop some (many) vaccines. Yes, change the timing of when they are given and only give one vaccine at a time. That would be a start anyway. Go back to the early 80’s (only with the newer versions of those vaccines – ie not the deadly DTP as an example)… Oh yeah, it would also be nice to not have the nasty monkey virus SV40 in the polio shots (not sure when that was resolved). That would be very helpful. Lol. On second thought, the whole program should probably be destroyed from top to bottom…

And that assumes the kid didn’t end up being one of 50,000 hospitalized per year from measles or worse, as you mentioned, one of the up to 2,000 with a seizure disorder, mental retardation, deafness, or blindness.

Let me guess the outcome of these diagnosis or death on the AV parents: eternal martyrdom or repentance?

What we should all be demanding then, of course, is that a vaccinated vs unvaccinated study be done, right? Too bad everyone on your side is so afraid of that. I can’t tell if some of you truly believe what you are saying… That we can’t assume anything about a grand mal seizure the same day as a vaccination? Really? And then we have a moron trying to argue getting hit by a bus (because somehow that is similar to a physical reaction to a vaccination). Wow! Thank goodness you guys are becoming more and more irrelevant. ? Please I beg of you… go off and get your 10,000 vaccines (or 100,000 if you please). Report back.

Todd W’s comment refers to an excellent article on randomized clinical trials. Since I’m sure you won’t read it, let me summarize. One randomizes a large group of children to two groups, one receiving vaccines and the other not receiving vaccines. The goal of the randomization procedure is to “ensure” that the children do NOT differ on any other variables that could influence the measured outcomes. Unfortunately, randomization does not guarantee this for one study. It is possible that some measurable variables (e.g. gender) or some unmeasurable variable (e.g. genetics, toxins in environment, etc.) could still be responsible by a larger percentage being in one of the two groups. So, we develop probability models of how over the long run the percentage of times that an outcome could be caused by variables other than the one being investigated, that is, either confidence intervals or statistical significance.

Since most parents, despite what you choose to believe, want to vaccinate their kids, a randomized trial would be impossible, so we do case-control studies. Despite what people choose to believe, one can draw causal inferences from case-control studies; but it is more difficult. One has to find a large number of cases (e.g., kids with autism, with very clear defining characteristics) and find 1 to 3 controls (e.g. kids not diagnosed with autism) that are similar on a number of variables that potentially could influence the outcome, e.g. gender, age, environment (rural, suburban, city, inner city), exposure to toxins/pesticides, level of prenatal care, parents smoker/non-smokers, etc. Given that antivaccinationists, for the most part, tend to cluster, white middle class suburbanites, it would be almost impossible to do such a study. The sample size of the controls, never vaccinated, would in all probability be too small.

I suggest, a waste of key strokes, that you see if your local university library has a copy of Merwyn Susser’s book “Causal Thinking in the Health Sciences.” It is out-of-print; but sometimes Amazon marketplace has used copies. In my opinion, it is the best book around on the subject of causal inference.

Another book with a good chapter on Causation and Causal Inference in Epidemiology (Chapter 2 in the book) is Kenneth J Rothman and Sander Greenland (1998). Modern Epidemiology (Second Edition). Most university libraries will have it and a number of used inexpensive copies are available on Amazon marketplace. There is now a Third Edition; but I doubt the Causal argument has changed.

You can also go to PubMed and search for articles by Susser and Rothman, some available for free downloading as pdf; but they don’t develop the ideas near as well as the book.

You write: “There are many parents who would willingly (and happily) allow their children to be unvaccinated.”

There are some; but surveys show the vast majority want their kids vaccinated. In addition, it is because of misinformation from people like you that parents are hesitant. Though a poor analogy, I’m sure if we got rid of laws on drinking and driving there would be people happy to drink and drive. Vaccinations as drinking and driving on public roads is a public health issue. Your rights end at my nose and your right to not vaccinate ends where it might risk children who can’t be vaccinated because of an autoimmune disease or receiving chemotherapy or who were vaccinated; but have a defective immune system. As long as you live in a community there are rights and there are responsibilities.

And you continue with the absolutely stupid 10,000 or 100,000 vaccines. My paper, which I listed in a previous comment, totally shows just how utterly stupid you and your antivaccinationist buddies are. Read the paper before you continue to make a jackass of yourself.

And once again, you play the Nazi card: “or the record genius the experimentation is done by the pro-vax nazis.”

Do you have any understanding of who the Nazis were? They had an absolute contempt for the intrinsic worth and dignity of human lives. Prior to the Holocaust they euthanized 10s of thousands as undeserving of life, kids with Down’s syndrome, mental retardation, a club foot, patients with bipolar disorders and schizophrenia. Then came the Holocaust. They didn’t just kill Jews, they killed Gypsies, Homosexuals, Leftists, Slavs, and others. And towards the end of the war they sent out 10 year-old German boys and old men to their deaths with no training and no hope. Seeing the war lost, they believed the German people had failed in their “historical mission” and, thus, deserved to die.

Whether you agree with the research on vaccine safety or not, do you really believe that doctors such as Dr. Gorski, epidemiologists, such as myself, the people at the CDC, and Pediatricians are vaccinating kids because they intentionally want to harm them? Keep in mind that almost all vaccinated themselves and their children. Do you believe they sacrificed their own kids as part of some world-wide conspiracy?

The Nazi had contempt for the intrinsic worth and dignity of human life. Whatever you think, the people supporting vaccines believe they are benefiting children, and the research supports that; but even if it didn’t, their motives are diametrically opposite that of the Nazis.

So, I repeat, by playing the Nazi card, you insult the memory of the victims of the Nazis and the soldiers of many nations who fought them, many dying or seriously wounded. You are an absolutely despicable excuse for a human being.

Joey @78:
So you would like to see:
More infertility (mumps)
More congenital birth defects (rubella)
More death (measles)
More disability (polio)
More lifelong herpes infections (chickenpox/shingles)
More liver cancer (HepB)
More death (diphtheria)
More death (whooping cough)
More missed school (all of the above)
More missed work (all of the above)
More deafness (mumps)

Joey: “Sorry guys… You lose the argument every single time when you fail to address the topic of toxic chemicals being injected into babies… ”
Well I for one am against toxic chemicals sickening our precious children.

I skimmed the paper you hyperlinked to, Dr. Tritz lecture on Mechanisms of Viral Pathogenicity. Nothing new; but a reasonable summary.

What you don’t understand is that, as I wrote in a previous comment and in the paper I wrote which I referred to in a previous comment, our bodies are assaulted by thousands of potentially dangerous microbes daily. In addition, our very DNA has large sections of fragments from viruses. This is not an either or, black and white world. As I explained in a previous comment and the referred to article, the levels of “toxins” in vaccines are miniscule compared to those we are exposed to every day. However, without vaccines this would be a very very different world. Smallpox alone, prior to the vaccine developed in 1798, every few years killed up to 50% of children and in areas where it was endemic, on average 1/4 to 1/3 almost every year. In addition, it left many blind or disfigured. And, as far as I have found, even today there is NO scientifically valid treatment for smallpox. Prior to the WHO campaign to end smallpox starting in 1967, an estimated 500 million people in the Third World died from it in the 20th Century. We, in the US, were protected because most, probably 95% or more, were vaccinated. And smallpox was just one of the diseases that vaccines prevent.

It is great that you found Dr. Tritz lecture; but you base your knowledge on it and the story is much more complicated. Of course, no one wants children sickened by toxic chemicals; but toxic depends not only on the chemical; but on the dose, the duration of exposure, and several other factors. The chemicals in vaccines are minimal. And one also has to weigh the alternative. Thank goodness that smallpox no longer exists in the natural environment. We were lucky that its natural reservoir was only in people. Polio, measles, and several other infectious diseases also only have humans as their natural reservoir. This means that once eliminated they won’t reappear because they also exist in animals.

Despite what antivaccinationists want you to believe, vaccines are the most researched product around, exactly because we give them to children, our own included. You can go to the CDC vaccine safety page and it has a hyperlink to studies sponsored by the CDC by year and there are many many more studies not done by the CDC, both in this country and abroad.

By the way, if you are worried about health, given your “name” “bacon” I would suggest you avoid products cured with nitrates. They have been found to convert in the body to carcinogens.

@has (#58) What in the world? Tuskegee experiment? WOW! I’m going to give you a huge LOL on that one! There are many parents who would willingly (and happily) allow their children to be unvaccinated.

So not only do you want to perform a grossly unethical trial on children, you want to perform one that is totally unblinded and non-randomized as well. Pray tell, Professor, as you’re clearly the world expert in this science stuff, how exactly are scientific trials meant to operate again, and to what goal?

“@Zach Stackhouse (#64)
Oh, I see… I didn’t realize that there were tests that were being done by doctors (after a possible vaccine reaction), where the tests would come back as either a vaccine reaction or not. (ie like a peanut allergy test in your post). Please advise the name of all those tests being done so that I can pass them along to all the vaccine injured children’s’ parents. Thanks in advance …”

No, on the whole, there aren’t tests that are given whenever a possible adverse reactions follows closely a vaccination. As for a peanut allergy, the anaphylactic shock would have been almost immediate, be treated and then if they found peanuts, even minute quantities, they would assume the peanuts caused it. However, most adverse reactions to vaccines, sore arm, slightly elevated temperature, even fainting are normal; but even they might not have been caused by vaccines. Have you never seen someone faint at the sight of a needle?

If a serious adverse event occurs, one looks at the timing, the possible biological mechanisms, and, of course, the possibility of random chance, always aware of the logical fallacy of post hoc ergo prompter hoc. And also see if one can rule out other possible causes.

As an aside, is there any objective test for autism spectrum disorders? Yes, for a subset that have been found to be clearly genetic; but most are diagnosed on observations, no actual physiological evidence.

So, in the individual case, despite almost overwhelming evidence to the contrary, one cannot “prove” that a vaccine didn’t cause some adverse event. If you understood science, which you clearly don’t, you would know that one can’t prove a negative.

Just a couple of absurd examples. Imagine that over the past 10 years that 1,000 crimes, e.g. shop lifting, car theft, burglary, and vandalism, have occurred within a 20 mile radius of where you live. Can you prove that you didn’t commit one or more of them?

Or, I assume you have heard of the law of gravity? Can you prove that it applies to every square foot of the planet Earth, that somewhere on our planet some unknown convergence of cosmic forces haven’t countered it?

Carl Sagan, in his fun-to-read book, The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Light in the Darkness, gives an example of someone claiming to have a Dragon in his garage. I’ll let you get the book and read about it.

No, one can’t prove a negative and No, there aren’t tests given routinely to test if an assumed vaccine associated adverse event occurs; but Sherlock Holmes actually explains how science works, “When you have eliminated all other possibilities, then the impossible must be it.” Or something close to that.

You, on the other hand, ignore all the scientifically research possibilities and begin with the one factor. Nice for you; but as Arte Johnson used to say in the Comic Series “Laugh-In”: “Very Stupid!

I suppose if my neighbor eats a peanut and reacts by swelling up and is unable to breathe… That’s anectdotal too?

Circular reasoning.
We already know that peanuts cause allergy.

Also, if said neighbor also ate eggs, shrimps*, or had a wasp nest near his house, it may be a good idea to keep an open mind and investigate a bit more before saying “it’s the peanut”. The wasp’s sting may still be down his throat.

*not that far-fetched. A number of seafood dishes are accompanied by a sauce made from nuts of some sort.
———————————–

In my youth, there was this weekly TV comedy show, set as a mock judicial hearing. Every time, some poor schmuck – always the same guy – was judged for the most outrageous or improbable reason.

One time, he was on trial as the owner of a Chinese restaurant; the plaintiff complaining of becoming very sick on the day following him eating at this restaurant. It quickly became evident that the restaurant was “Chinese” only by name, and the guy was an awful chef.

And then the plaintiff let it slip that, thanks goodness, he wasn’t immediately sick and was able to attend the same day a sausage eating contest, where he won the title of the biggest, fastest eater.

@Joey #42: “Some of you are having trouble making sense of some really easy concepts here. I suppose if my neighbor eats a peanut and reacts by swelling up and is unable to breathe… That’s anectdotal too?”

It would be, if there weren’t a large body of literature showing how peanuts trigger allergic reactions in people. We can actually describe the immune response that takes place: from IgE to mast cells to histamine and a whole lotta other mind blowing concepts in the immune system.

No one can show how vaccines actually damage children.

But if you like anecdotes, here’s one for you:

I have Asperger’s Syndrome. Two years ago, I got a booster shot for TDaP as a requirement for my job (hospital insisted it because our area had a pertussis outbreak). Amazingly, my friends began commenting that the worst of my Aspie symptoms were easing up. Less literalism, less obsessiveness with my hobbies, better verbal skills.

The fact I’d recently completed cognitive behavioral therapy had nothing to do with it, I’m sure. It must be the vaccines. They cured my Aspergers!

Someone call the New England Journal of Medicine. I’m sure they’ll want to do a case control study right away.

Ah ha… Thank you! Since there can never be “proof of safety” of vaccines… They cannot be mandated for anyone. The pharma companies and cdc employees are too corrupt to force any of this junk on anyone. I say that even though it would be amazing to inject some of these criminals with 10,000 (or 100,000) vaccines.

Hey… Were you aware that there thousands upon thousands of studies, etc… Which show a connection with vaccines and autism and other autoimmune issues. Apparemtly, you’re living in the 1970’s.

Hey… Have there been hundreds of thousands of other aspies who have had the same result due to the tdap? I’m sure that you are aware in the case of babies, that’s what has happened… Intelligent and caring parents have spoken and their children have had the same negative consequences post-vax. Maybe you are on to something though… How about asking your doctor to hook you up with 100 dtaps and see what happens (or 10,000 of maybe even 100,000) with a pint of rabbit’s blood and some nasty monkey virus to go along with it.

OK, so you don’t want to be vaccinated. Fine. You may find yourself restricted from a few jobs (the military, working in a hospital, some animal work), but otherwise it should not affect your life very much.
However, in order to prevent the spread of serious diseases into the rest of the population we will have to require you to abide by the laws that are in place from the time before vaccines – specifically quarantine. During the entire course of a communicable disease you will be restricted to your home unless you need medical care.
I’m sure you’re fine with that.

Hoey @95: You do know that vaccines actually *prevent* one of the known causes of autism spectrum disorder, right?
Rubella. Rubella infection during pregnancy can cause birth defects, including brain disorders, including autism.

Ah ha… Thank you! Since there can never be “proof of safety” of vaccines… They cannot be mandated for anyone. The pharma companies and cdc employees are too corrupt to force any of this junk on anyone. I say that even though it would be amazing to inject some of these criminals with 10,000 (or 100,000) vaccines.”

You are stupid beyond belief. The point that I was making is that it is logically impossible to prove a negative; but that doesn’t mean one can’t have a high level of confidence in something. In any case, the risk of vaccines is infinitely less than the risk from the vaccines. Anyone with an iota of intelligence would understand that.

And you continue with the 10,000 or 100,000 without reading my paper. Imagine someone is accused of a crime and then overwhelming proof of both his/her innocence and who the real criminal is, would you continue to accuse the first person? Of course you would because you would be too stupid to even consider the overwhelming evidence because you had made up your mind.

Read my paper or just shut up. You continue to make a fool of yourself by refusing to even look at evidence refuting the 10,000 or 100,000

As for: “Hey… Were you aware that there thousands upon thousands of studies, etc… Which show a connection with vaccines and autism and other autoimmune issues. Apparemtly, you’re living in the 1970’s.”

No, not even close. Maybe you should go back on your meds because you live in a fantasy world of delusions.

Right exactly… Rubella can cause autism… Which makes it even more mind-boggling that you can’t wrap your head around the idea that the vaccine (with the live rubella virus) can too! Sigh. I actually feel bad for some of you. So much cognitive dissonace here.

Oh Joey, would that you could understand the difference between pre-natal and post-natal.

In case you are intellectually honest and just ignorant, here’s an analogy: lack of folic acid pre-natal can cause neural tube defects like spina bifida. Lack of folic acid as an adult does not cause spina bifida. Lack of folic acid as a newborn does not cause spina bifida. Do you understand the difference?

Also, we’ve had a vaccine for rubella since 1969. Where are all the autistic adults? Shouldn’t there be millions of them if the rubella vaccine causes autism?

Chris @ 103 “Joey, where the “right places” are to get proper vaccube information?”
.
I can answer that!!
.
Based on Joey’s answers, he visits a cranio-proctologist for his medical information. His head is removed from the orifice and the answers just come pouring out.

ToddW:The better question to ask is, how would they feel if their unvaccinated child were infected with a VPD from some other unvaccinated child and suffered serious, permanent sequelae as a result (e.g., deafness, blindness, encephalopathy with permanent intellectual damage, death, etc.).

They’d wail on the internet or just kill the kid and start over.

Joey: Intelligent and caring parents have spoken and their children have had the same negative consequences post-vax.

Anti-vax parents are neither. They are incapable of caring about their children. All they care about is the reduction in status that comes with a disabled child, and the fact that they cannot hand off childcare duties to a paid surrogate and resume work. And they aren’t smart- most barely passed college, few have advanced degrees and not a single one passed high school biology.

Right exactly… Rubella can cause autism… Which makes it even more mind-boggling that you can’t wrap your head around the idea that the vaccine (with the live rubella virus) can too! Sigh. I actually feel bad for some of you. So much cognitive dissonace here.”

Rubella can cause autism if experienced in the 1st trimester of pregnancy when the fetal brain is first developing.

The vaccine is NOT given once pregnant. In addition, you really don’t understand what a live vaccine is. It is significantly weakened so it can only pose a risk for someone with a compromised immune system. Regardless, the vaccine is NOT given to pregnant women. If a doctor were to do that and you know of it, report him/her. They should have their license suspended.

#97
Just a Tech: During the entire course of a communicable disease you will be restricted to your home unless you need medical care.
I’m sure you’re fine with that.

Why would Joey accept medical care formulated using the same evidence-based methodology as that which deems vaccines safe and beneficial? I’m sure he’d refuse all medical intervention if he really believes everything he spouts.

Studies have found that serious conditions are often reported to VAERS and the people reporting them are often lawyers, hoping to document the parent’s suspicion and that a subsequent CDC investigation will bolster their case.

Ah, I didn’t think of VAERS this way. It make sense that, if a lawyer/plaintiff is going to use the database to support his claims, he/she is going to start by entering his own cases.
IOW, if anything, cases considered as serious AE are over-represented rather than under-reported.

BTW, on behalf of the old gang of minions, welcome around these parts. I believe it’s the first thread I saw your comments.

the fact that they cannot hand off childcare duties to a paid surrogate and resume work.

An argument you presented in a previous thread and is actually quite compeling. Well, if there were more appropriate childcare available for special children, a lot of people would feel a lot better. Starting with the children themselves, I guess.

And they aren’t smart- most barely passed college, few have advanced degrees and not a single one passed high school biology.

Now your elitism is showing. Knock it off, please.
You are also quite wrong. A number of AVer leaders did pass high school biology, and some of them forged on to become physicians or nurses (some of them visit us regularly, I’m sure you remember).
They just forgot their immunology lessons, and/or decided that naturopathy (or some other sh!t) was more lucrative. Or it was simply that pandering to the whims of their rich, ignorant clientele is more rewarding.

Since most parents, despite what you choose to believe, want to vaccinate their kids, a randomized trial would be impossible, so we do case-control studies. Despite what people choose to believe, one can draw causal inferences from case-control studies;…

I would also like to say thank you for your previous posts. While they were not addressed to me, I still find them useful. I do not have a science background, so everytime I read posts like that (or various blog posts like Orac’s) I learn a little bit more. I get a quick peek at a really complex topic and I find that interesting.

@Troels: that’s a very interesting study. But Joey won’t like it, because it doesn’t show that unvaccinated children are so much healthier than vaccinated children (if he reads it at all, and actually understands statistics). I, too, would like Dr Harrison’s take on it.

Joey: when you understand HOW a double-blinded study is set up, let us know how you’d do it to create a vaccinated vs unvaccinated study. You’ll need to answer these questions:

1. How many children would you need in your study?
2. How would you recruit the parents?
3. Hou would you word the consents?
4. How would you get it funded?
5. How would you obtain IRB approval for the study?

If you can’t answer those very SIMPLE, BASIC questions on creating a study, go away until you can.

Stop. You are simply WRONG (and ignorant too). My child had a severe reaction to his MMR vaccine. Broke out into a “viral rash” (that’s what the doctors documented in his records). Head to toe “viral rash” which was of course associated with the MMR. When I brought him in to the office they quickly removed him from the waiting room and started panicking about the other patients. Almost comical when I think about it now. Idiots who injected my son with God-knows-what then racing around going “omg… what’s this. Protect the other patients. Lol”.

So, please… Stop with the “oh it’s such a weakened live virus it can’t hurt… Blah, blah, blah… It’s BS. Now, if you want to say my son has a weak immune system. Ok, I’ll go with it. As a PHD, are you able to write medical exemptions? Clearly my son and his siblings should all get one, right? you can’t have it both ways, genius… “Oh, it can’t hurt”, then when documented proof that a child had an adverse reaction, it’s said… “Yeah, that’s coincidence”. Or, “no sorry… That’s not worthy of a medical exemption”.

You clearly have ZERO knowledge about regressive autism… None, zilch, zippo. Thankfully, I was able to help my son soon after that via diet and going to a holistic doctor who was trained to see vaccine injury in children who could not process the toxic load / viral load. I will be forever grateful. Open your eyes people. You are very sheltered if you simply hang on this nonsense blog. Go read parent testimonials, watch fb videos of parents, follow vaxxed, watch how Dr. Thompson is going to be brought up and subpoenaed for his involvement in the MMR fraud. You are losing. Thank goodness more and more people are waking up to the fraud and corruption.

You clearly have ZERO knowledge about regressive autism… None, zilch, zippo. Thankfully, I was able to help my son soon after that via diet and going to a holistic doctor who was trained to see vaccine injury in children who could not process the toxic load / viral load. I will be forever grateful.

So you gained an illusion of control over the fundamentally uncontrollable by seeking out quacks who exploited your obvious need to make sense of something that, in fact, turns out to be part of the crapshoot of life. They exploited you, they exploited your son. And the sick part is that by reinforcing the false information you received, they made you grateful for their exploitation.

This cannot be said clearly enough: there is no link between vaccines and autism. People who “treat” autism by reference to “vaccine injury” are either delusional or charlatans, or possibly both. Far from suppressing it, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent looking for any proof of a link. Even though the studies purporting to show a link are mainly tiny, and the most significant turned out to be fraudulent, the world of medical science – which could legitimately have told the antivaxers to just fuck off and die – actually expended a vast amount of time and effort testing their claims.

The claims are false. There is no correlation between vaccines and autism. Vaccinated children are no more likely to be autistic than unvaccinated.

The antivax cult of course dogmatically rejects the results of this patient inquiry. And the irony is that they accuse science of not hearing what it doesn’t want to hear. In truth, if there was any credible evidence that vaccines cause autism, then that would be on record by now and there would be work underway to find out why. But there is no such evidence, so no such inquiry is warranted.

I’m still waiting for the day Dr Thompson is being “brought up and subpoenaed”. The Antivaxxers have been claiming this for MONTHS and it hasn’t happened. And where is the infamous study that was coming out in May that was going to show us all?

Joey: you may love your son, but you are intellectually stunted. Have you even read the CDC papers? They’re available publically, you know.

And yes, a viral rash is possible after the MMR; both my kids got it. I doubt the pediatrician’s office panicked that much, if you’d notified them your son has received the MMR within the past 48 hours. It’s generally short term, and is NOT full-blown illness. But if you just showed up at the office with no notice, of course they’d freak out since they might not recall you from the visit. They probably had babies and immuno-compromised children who could have been made VERY ill if your child had the actual disease. (No, there is no shedding from the MMR and your child was not infectious.)

(Note to self: see if Joey is sensible in response. If not, cease to FTT).

@Julian Frost: as I noted above, it’s actually pretty common for a child to develop a rash after the MMR. Both of mine did it. In fact, as long as the daycare they were in knew they were post MMR, they didn’t even make the kids stay home if they developed a rash – it was so common (normally, those kids would be sent home until clear).

About a week to 11 days after the MMR injection, some children get a very mild form of measles. This includes a rash, high temperature, loss of appetite and a general feeling of being unwell for about two or three days.
About three to four weeks after having the MMR injection, one in 50 children develop a mild form of mumps. This includes swelling of the glands in the cheek, neck or under the jaw, and lasts for a day or two.

I can’t wrap my head around the idea that *parents* want to increase the number visits to the pediatrist, and the number of times a baby has to be hold down and poked with needles. Surely, less many visits and less many needles should be easier on a young infant!

Now, if doctors were as callous and motivated by lucre as the anti-vax crowd wants us to believe zero they’d be the ones pushing for spacing out the vaccines. Especially when it can result into more sick babies down the road.

MI Dawn., that’s interesting, and I didn’t know that about the rash (mild form of measles). Looking back over the past (mumble) decades, I believe that if I had had the choice between the rash you describe and the measles through which I suffered, I’d take the damned rash.

I suppose if my neighbor eats a peanut and reacts by swelling up and is unable to breathe… That’s anectdotal too?

Yes, by the very definition of “anecdotal”.

We need the data that supports the idea that peanuts can trigger an allergic reaction.

Yes, of course. It is only because we have data that shows that some people react to peanuts with symptoms that include swelling and difficulty breathing that the anecdote appears to show something you consider so obvious. Even still, as others point out, without more data it’s not possible to say your neighbor has a peanut allergy.

Thankfully, I was able to help my son soon after that via diet and going to a holistic doctor who was trained to see vaccine injury in children who could not process the toxic load / viral load.

Ah. Seems Joey is convinced his son was going to become autistic post-MMR injection and was timely saved by his holistic doctor.

Now, if you want to say my son has a weak immune system

He reacted to the vaccine and his skin mounted a reaction to the viruses’ presence. IANAD, but that’s seem the sign that his immune system is fine, if a bit on the over-reactive part.

Clearly my son and his siblings should all get one, right?

Again, IANAD (NDIPOOTV). Your son, maybe. Maybe not.
His other siblings, not so sure. They may not have whatever made your son react.
You may also want to distinguish between vaccines like MMR and DTaP. They have completely different formulation, you know. No live virus, to start with.

Now, question for you, Joey:

Given your son’s reaction to the weakened viruses in the vaccine, should you son have caught good old natural measles (or mump, or rubella) instead, what do you think would have happened to him?

@Joey, okay , he had a rash. Lots of conditions can cause a rash, and sometimes, yes, they are a side effect of the MMR and, sometimes, they aren’t. What was the injury done to him? A rash is certainly unpleasant, but I’d hardly call it a vaccine injury.

Background: Whether unvaccinated children and adolescents differ from those
vaccinated in terms of health is subject to some discussion

Method: We evaluated data on diseases that are preventable by vaccination,
infectious and atopic [allergies] diseases, and vaccinations received that had been collected
between 2003 and 2006 in a representative sample of 17 641 subjects

Results: Evaluable data on vaccinations were available for 13 453 subjects
aged 1–17 years from non-immigrant families. 0.7% of them (95% confidence
interval: 0.5%–0.9%) were not vaccinated.

Conclusion: The prevalence of allergic diseases and non-specific infections in
children and adolescents was not found to depend on vaccination status.

Note the small number of unvaccinated, 94 versus vaccinated 13,359. Just as I discussed in a previous comment, unvaccinated numbers extremely small. Go to Table 1 and look at the confidence intervals, all over the place and Figure 1. Despite this, all over the blogosphere antivaccinationists claim findings contradicted by what is actually stated in the paper. Not surprising. Read the paper for yourself. Note also that the data on diseases was collected from the parents without verification from medical records. Vaccinations were verified. When the CDC investigates a VAERS report they usually speak with a parent and obtain medical records.

So, it was a nice attempt; but given so few unvaccinated, almost impossible to draw any valid conclusions. Such a small group could certainly differ on a number of variables. In addition, they did not verify the diseases.

You write: “So, please… Stop with the “oh it’s such a weakened live virus it can’t hurt… Blah, blah, blah… It’s BS.”

As usual you really understand very little. Not I, nor anyone, has ever claimed that adverse events to vaccines do not exist. As for your kids breaking out in a rash, the cause could be a simple allergic reaction to one of the ingredients in the vaccine; but if so, then, since those ingredients are ubiquitous in the environment, it probably could have happened any time. However, was there any long term sequelae? Not according to your comment. So, yes, vaccines do cause a number of minor adverse events and, in rare cases, some serious. Kids break out in rashes from eating foods that they didn’t know they were allergic too. They don’t die, they don’t suffer permanent disabilities, just an unpleasant episode.

Stop the lying that provaccinationists are as simple-minded as you in seeing the world as dichotomous, black and white. As I have written umpteen times, the risks from vaccines are minuscule compared to the actual diseases. If your kid had gotten measles, it would have been far worse, a week with temperatures spiking at 105, rashes over entire body with intense itching lasting a week or more, anorexia (loss of appetite), malaise and for about 1 in 20 hospitalizations, with between 400 – 500 dying and up to 2,000 suffering blindness, deafness, seizure disorders, and mental retardation.

Ever heard of Rett’s Syndrome, just one of several genetic diseases where a child progresses normally and suddenly begins to regress. Not because of vaccines. Somehow genetically pre-programmed. In addition, numerous studies where they could obtain videos of kids prior to vaccines found that they showed indications of autistic behaviors, just not noticed until some specific time and some specific behavior and then the parents remembered they had been vaccinated; but forgot the behaviors prior to vaccination. Given that you still haven’t bothered to read my article that I have suggested several times, I doubt you have read much about anything. My expertise is not in autism; but I was, prior to getting a 3-year post-doctoral fellowship where I trained in epidemiology, a licensed psychologist and because of claims by antivaccinationists have read a half dozen books and probably 100 journal articles on autism spectrum disorders.

You write: “You are very sheltered if you simply hang on this nonsense blog. Go read parent testimonials, watch fb videos of parents, follow vaxxed, watch how Dr. Thompson is going to be brought up and subpoenaed for his involvement in the MMR fraud. You are losing. Thank goodness more and more people are waking up to the fraud and corruption.”

Try reading just the one article and look at the large reference list. If you have followed this blog, you have obviously missed all the articles that refute Thompson’s claims and I also wrote an article that shows just how wrong Wakefield is about vaccine safety and I wrote another article on Wakefield that is currently making the rounds from colleagues for critique and feedback.

It has 150 references. So, I read probably over 200 papers and used 150 just to write one article. I think that alone documents just how much investigation I do. You just keep making a bigger and bigger fool of yourself. As for parents’ testimonials, doctors should listen to what a parent says; but not stop there. People tend to see, to focus on things, that often turn out to be wrong. Just to be as absurd as you, there are parents who claim their kids were abducted by aliens in the night and returned changed. There are parents who believe their children suffer demon possession, etc. I guess, according to you, we should listen to them and act based on their beliefs. As I wrote in a previous comment, “just because someone believes something, doesn’t make it so” (Neil deGrass Tyson, last episode of new Cosmos series)

You write: “Well, if there were more appropriate childcare available for special children, a lot of people would feel a lot better. Starting with the children themselves, I guess.”

I couldn’t agree more. I lived in Sweden for 9 years. One of my closest friends 4th child was born with Down Syndrome. Down Syndrome not only affects mental capacity; but often includes heart problems and hip problems. In Sweden, all necessary surgery and medical care for children, high tech and high quality, is free. In addition, they believe in the intrinsic worth and dignity of every life, so they have special programs to help all children reach whatever potential they have. With my friend’s kid, a van picked him up every day to take him to a quality special ed center; but the goal was to mainstream him as best as possible eventually in regular schools. In addition, once every three months a trained person came to the home for 72 hours to give the parents respite care. It is a lot of work taking care of a special needs child, so Sweden tries to give them some free time. And the percentage of GDP in Sweden that goes to this is less by far than the percentage of GDP that goes to the American health care system which offers a lot less. Their system is designed to help people, while the American health care system is designed to extract as much profit as possible.

Since many children develop problems or are born with them who have not recently been vaccinated, what happens to them? And what would happen to all the children hurt by natural vaccine-preventable diseases if we did not have vaccines? The Vaccine Court, applying rather liberal criteria, helps parents whose children “may” have been injured by a vaccine; but what about all the others. In most civilized nations the community through some form of non-profit universal coverage does. Not in the social darwinistic US.

You write:

And they aren’t smart- most barely passed college, few have advanced degrees and not a single one passed high school biology.
Now your elitism is showing.

I agree with you. It is not my PhD; but how I go about learning things. Even in High School we had to do a term paper and were required to have a minimum number of references and, though one could use an Encyclopedia article, most had to be original sources. The requirements were higher in college. As Joey has shown, she claims 1,000s of studies; but can’t give any. I suggested she read my article before continuing with the 10,000; but no indication she did. The reason she and other antivaccinationists are stupid is not whatever innate brain power they have; but their rigid close-minded approach, their poor scholarship (cherry-picking, only reading what confirms their point of view), deficient knowledge of science basics and the basics of research methodology, and their use of ad hominem arguments to compensate,. And in Joey’s case, her despicable playing the Nazi card. Something that places Joey outside of any realm of decency.

My child had a severe reaction to his MMR vaccine. Broke out into a “viral rash” (that’s what the doctors documented in his records). Head to toe “viral rash” which was of course associated with the MMR.

If these problems occur, it is usually within 6-14 days after the shot. They occur less often after the second dose.

Did you child have any other symptoms, such as the fever? How long did the symptoms last? Please forgive my curiosity – I had the same rash after getting the MMR as an adult (I started grad school in the 1990s after the large outbreaks changed the vaccine recommendations thus needed a booster), but mine went away again in a few hours, and I don’t know anyone else who had one.

Joey

You clearly have ZERO knowledge about regressive autism…

So, your child who has regressive autism also got a MMR-induced rash? Interesting, but I have no idea why you would think those two things were connected.

Me? I wish we could put more attention into researching adverse effects – who gets them? Are there genetic links, or is it random? Is it an allergy to components or the vaccine, or related to other factors in the individual’s immune system? I believe we need studies that follow up children who had adverse reactions (even mild ones) and their siblings – this would allow to determine if those siblings really are at risk for a similar reaction. And I’d love to see studies comparing children like yours and cases such as commenter MI Dawn above who doesn’t develop lasting immunity to the normal cases.

Instead, we’ve wasted years – decades or perhaps even centuries if you count work hours – and tons of money across the world searching for a link to autism. And we consistently don’t find one. And without data to guide us, the parents of children who had actual adverse reactions to vaccines are left at the mercy of internet fear mongers.

The VIS quote ends at: “after the second dose.”
Next paragraph mine.
Next line Joey’s

Reposting the rest that’s mine (without all italics)
So, your child who has regressive autism also got a MMR-induced rash? Interesting, but I have no idea why you would think those two things were connected.

I wish we could put more attention into researching adverse effects – who gets them? Are there genetic links, or is it random? Is it an allergy to components or the vaccine, or related to other factors in the individual’s immune system? I believe we need studies that follow up children who had adverse reactions (even mild ones) and their siblings – this would allow to determine if those siblings really are at risk for a similar reaction. And I’d love to see studies comparing children like yours and cases such as commenter MI Dawn above who doesn’t develop lasting immunity to the normal cases.

Instead, we’ve wasted years – decades or perhaps even centuries if you count work hours – and tons of money across the world searching for a link to autism. And we consistently don’t find one. And without data to guide us, the parents of children who had actual adverse reactions to vaccines are left at the mercy of internet fear mongers.

Looking for a book for summer beach reading, or to give someone who you may not like very much? Just out from Brave Maverick Press – it’s the autobiography of Suzanne Humphries, once an obscure nephrologist, but now one of the most laughed-at antivaxers. From the amazon blurb:

“This autobiography tells the intricate and personal story (of) one doctor’s path through medical school and out into academia, specialty medicine, and practice, having to conform to the system’s standards. Like many doctors, she was on the way to becoming one of the walking dead. Then, one day she realized that policy was harming her patients, and she took a stand. This resulted in hostility and ostracism by the authorities and her peers in the system. In 2011, depressed and deflated, life was difficult in all directions . . . until she found peace through an unexpected path and a new friend.”

I’m excited to find out whether she’s talking about an imaginary friend, one of those studs at AoA, or perhaps Harold the Homeopath. Well, it’s sure to be inspiring, regardless.

The phrase “Too Many Too Soon” gains validity, as a reason to question the vaccination schedule, in the absence of pre-vaccination testing.

In my opinion, the safety measure described below should be used to reduce or eliminate childhood injuries from “Too Many Too Soon” vaccinations:

1. Medical research must clearly define a typical (i.e., healthy) proteomic profile;
2. Require a test to determine a child’s proteomic profile before each vaccination; then
3. Children having an atypical proteomic profile (e.g., neurotrophin overexpression) should not receive a vaccination until their profile falls in a typical range.

The phrase “Too Many Too Soon” gains validity, as a reason to question the vaccination schedule, in the absence of pre-vaccination testing.

{{citation needed}}

The phrase “too many too soon” is an invention of the antivaxers, as yet another post-hoc rationalisation for why they are right despite the absence of any remotely plausible mechanism. In fact, as has been discussed in these pages before, the total antigen load from the entire schedule now is less than the load from a single vaccine fifty years ago, and a tiny fraction of what the child is subjected through due to the process we call life.

Joel @134: They only managed to find 94 unvaccianted German kids? I’m impressed. And I can’t imagine how many cofounders there were with those kids. Sibling groups, socieo-economic status, religion, use of other medicine…
Yeah, not surprised that the researchers couldn’t draw a lot of conclusions.

Besides my career in epidemiology, I have studied health care systems of different countries. I actually have several on the French health care system, even one in France. I wish we had the French health care system in the US. Not quite single-payer, one fund that covers most and then 16 smaller historical funds; but all basically the same.

And, I managed to read several books in French, including Voltaire’s Candide and La Petite Prince.

I’m an allergist. I evaluate food and drug allergies. Easily half the people who come thinking they have had a reaction to a food or drug are mistaken. Here is how it works: Patient tells me the story, and then I test. If there is any doubt left, then many times I will administer said drug or food and directly watch what happens. Most people are happy when I tell them that they are not allergic and may once again eat, for example, shrimp, or take Amoxicillin.

Strangely, a few individuals refuse to believe the results of the testing. They hem and haw, They concoct some special reason they are sensitive (this is known as special pleading). They refuse to undergo a challenge test. In a couple cased I have done challenges that were rigged (gave placebo and told them they were getting the real thing) in order to show them that their symptoms were all in their head. I’ve stopped doing this because it didnt work. There simply was no level of evidence to convince them that they were not allergic. .

My point is that the fact that many parents tell a story of autism starting right after a vaccine is proof of nothing. It is an enormous error to take their stories at face value. Humans are biased. Memory is pliable. Coincidences do happen. By the way, I have treated tens of thousands of children. I dont ever recall a parent telling me their child regressed after a vaccine. I think the “thousands upon thousands” statistic is a exaggeration. A few hundred maybe and then a few dozen who are extremely vocal.

You say there are thousands of studies showing autism is associated with vaccines. Around here it is customary to cite your sources. How about you pick the three strongest papers and post some links. Not thousands. THREE. Certainly you can provide three, seeing as how your case is so strong?

I know, I was joking, because in real life, I do have a very strong French accent in English.
Also, if people know what to look for, sometimes my English sentence would have a typical French structure.

I managed to read several books in French, including Voltaire’s Candide and Le Petit Prince.

Two great classical books of French literature. And reading Voltaire dans le texte in no small feat, this guy had some elaborate writings.

@Helianthus: as an Englishman, I found Voltaire’s Lettres philosophiques challenging to read in the original French, but also very informative and well observed. We don’t change quickly over here, and much of it is just as true today as it was then!

The two most powerful words one can speak to help promote a healthy and safe vaccination schedule are: what if….

That is why over $400m has been spent investigating tbd conjecture that vaccines cause autism, even though there is no plausible way they could and the paper originally advancing the notion was retracted as fraudulent. “What if” is the reason we know the vaccine schedule is safe. It is a question asked and answered.

In #89 I discussed the logical impossibility of proving a negative. Post-marketing surveillance of vaccines, while not perfect, is better than any other product on the market. It includes not only VAERS; but more real-time databases such as the Vaccine Safety Datalink, and dedicated teams monitoring these and more who if they notice something investigate further; but regardless of how much evidence, the absence of biological probability, the logical fallacy of post hoc ergo prompter hoc looms large. So, the what if . . , is built into post-marketing surveillance. Even with the absolute best run randomized clinical trials, they are aware that rare events may not be captured in the clinical trials. Despite this, literally thousands of studies done around the world have found vaccines to be extremely safe; but not 100%, As far as I know, nothing is 100% effective and 100% safe. And, given the risks from the actual vaccine-preventable diseases, the benefit to cost ratio is “exponential” in favor of vaccinating.

“What if” is a cheap way to circumvent your opponents’ arguments.
It’s a dishonest attempt to pretend you have a valid point when you still are in the step of proving you have a point in the first place.

I have seen it with Séralini’s awful rat article; after all the pounding it received by real scientists, pseudo-journalists either pulled the shill gambit or went on writing articles literately titled “But what if Séralini was right?”.

Yeah, yeah, I know – AVers are pathologically incapable of asking such a question of themselves, never mind accepting or acknowledging any answer other than the one they demand to hear. They sure do love to dish it but not a single one of them can take it.

What if a child has neurotrophin overexpression (e.g., BDNF, NGF) and then gets multiple vaccinations?

It is well known that immune responses (e.g., mast cell stimulation and degranulation) can increase the expression of neurotrophins.

What if vaccinations tip-the-scale causing increased overexpression of neurotrophins, during critical moments of childhood development, inducing atypical neurological development resulting in an autism spectrum disorder?

@Julian Frost (#166)

JAQing off reference clarification:

“just asking questions” only applies when the answers are already well known, where the question embodies a point refuted a thousand times, and where the questioner exhibits willful ignorance. 🙂

A child’s neurotrophin profile is NOT tested before vaccinations, maybe it should be?

What if vaccinations tip-the-scale causing increased overexpression of neurotrophins, during critical moments of childhood development, inducing atypical neurological development resulting in an autism spectrum disorder?

What if repeated studies find no statistical relationship between vaccinations and development of autism spectrum disorder?

“In my opinion, the safety measure described below should be used to reduce or eliminate childhood injuries from “Too Many Too Soon” vaccinations:

1. Medical research must clearly define a typical (i.e., healthy) proteomic profile;
2. Require a test to determine a child’s proteomic profile before each vaccination; then
3. Children having an atypical proteomic profile (e.g., neurotrophin overexpression) should not receive a vaccination until their profile falls in a typical range.

Both myself and Dr Gorski have written articles debunking the “too many too soon”. I’ve given the hyperlink to my article, try reading it:

Maybe some naturopathic website claims they can create a proteomic profile for a modest fee; but we are many years from reliable valid inexpensive such profiles. It is only about 15 years since we sequenced the genome and, for instance, with mitochondrial disorders, of numerous variants, there exist gene sequences for only a few and they aren’t cheap.

Basically what you want doesn’t exist, so it is a cop-out. As I and others have written, the risks from the vaccines are minuscule compared to the actual diseases. And we live in communities so that your rights end at my nose, in simple language, you have NO right to endanger mine and other kids by refusing vaccines. Many serious diseases are but a plane flight away. There are children who have autoimmune diseases, going through chemotherapy, or received vaccinations; but their respective immune systems just didn’t build enough protection. If someone’s unvaccinated kid goes abroad with family, brings back a vaccine-preventable disease, your child could be part of the chain of transmission as well as personally endangered. We give up some rights in order to benefit from the advantages of living in communities, one of those rights is to knowingly endanger the health of others. And despite what people choose to believe, parents do NOT have absolute say in their children’s welfare. Children are innocent and should NOT be endangered because of their respective parents ignorance.

As Chemmomo writes in #163:

“What if
….
You’re right. What if I am too afraid to vaccinate, and my child suffers pertussis, or measles, or chicken pox. . . .
Why don’t you folks bother to try to understand that part of the risk assessment?”

As I’ve written before, nothing is risk free. When you buy food at the supermarket, can you be absolutely sure it has no microbial contaminants, no toxins? When you go to a restaurant, can you be absolutely sure the food is safe? When you go to the doctor and his nurse draws blood, can you be absolutely certain the quick alcohol swab removed all dangerous microbes so that one doesn’t penetrate into your body with the needle? Do you drive a car? Well, the risk of death or injury is exponentially higher than from vaccines.

As for “proteonomics”, typical example of using scientific terms without understanding their meanings. There is a great little book, fun read, on how people see science as a prestigious important institution so they use scientific language to promote their positions; albeit using it incorrectly.

You write: “The phrase “Too Many Too Soon” gains validity, as a reason to question the vaccination schedule, in the absence of pre-vaccination testing.
In my opinion, the safety measure described below should be used to reduce or eliminate childhood injuries from “Too Many Too Soon” vaccinations:
1. Medical research must clearly define a typical (i.e., healthy) proteomic profile;
2. Require a test to determine a child’s proteomic profile before each vaccination; then
3. Children having an atypical proteomic profile (e.g., neurotrophin overexpression) should not receive a vaccination until their profile falls in a typical range.

First, both Dr. Gorski and I have written articles totally debunking the idea that giving several vaccines at one time overwhelms the immune system. Try reading, for instance, my article and maybe, just maybe, you will learn something:

As for proteomics, we just sequenced the genome about 15 years ago and are still working on learning what various genes do. For instance, for mitochondrial disorders, we now have sequences for a few of the many variants of mitochondrial disorders and they aren’t cheap. See a recent review:

It will be decades before we know enough about the proteome to be able to do the tests you want and given how costs are going up in our health care system, they probably won’t be cheap, at least, at first. So, the “safety measures” you want are a cop-out. Perhaps, some naturopathic website is offering such tests for a nice price; but there is NO valid and reliable data that they aren’t anything more than a way to make money.

You use “proteome” but I highly doubt you really understand it. Typical of people who don’t understand science; but can use scientific words. There is a great little book that discusses this:

Christopher P. Toumies (1996) Conjuring Science: Scientific Symbols and Cultural Meanings in American Life. Rutgers University Press.
And another good book:

Numerous studies have found NO association between vaccinations and autism spectrum disorder. Hannah Poling was NOT diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder! But, even if this were a rare risk, since there are no tests currently available, and, if a child suffered from such a disorder, then any stressor could cause the same problem. As my article points out, kids are exposed to literally thousands of potentially harmful microbes every day. If vaccinations would tip-the-scale, then certainly a bad cold, flu, food poisoning, etc. would also. And, if more and more parents opt to not vaccinate their kids, then the risk to such children from the currently vaccine-preventable diseases would increase more and more. I assure you that measles alone would tax any kids immune system far more than a few killed and attenuated microbes.

Finally, we live in communities. As such, we have rights and responsibilities. One right we don’t have is to intentionally risk the health of children, neither our own nor others. Despite what some people choose to believe, parents do NOT have absolute rights to decide for their children. If you don’t vaccinate your child, even if you don’t travel abroad, if some other unvaccinated child travels abroad, brings back a vaccine-preventable disease, then your child could suffer the consequences and/or be part of the chain of transmission. There are kids with autoimmune diseases, being treated with chemotherapy, or just got vaccinated; but the vaccine didn’t take. They are part of the community, they are innocents, and we, as a community are responsible. The fact that you don’t know what you are talking about doesn’t change this. Vaccines have a long history of having saved literally millions of lives, prevented millions of disabilities over the past 200 years. Just in the 20th Century prior to the WHO campaign to end smallpox, at estimated 500 million people in the Third World died and many survivors were blinded and/or severely disfigured. We were protected in the US because of a high level of vaccinations.

If you are worried about risks, what if . . .? How do you dare drive a car? The risks of death or disability from driving a car are exponentially greater than from vaccines. How do you dare eat food since there is always a risk of microbial or chemical contamination? When you go to a doctor’s office and they take blood, how can you be sure the cursory alcohol swab really removed all harmful microbes and some didn’t enter your body from the needle?

Nothing in the world that I know of is 100% effective nor 100% safe; but vaccines, because of the tremendous amount of research conducted around the world over many years, because of the post-marketing surveillance, and because almost all who work in public health also vaccinate themselves and their children, are the safest thing one can get, safer than our foods and safer than any other pharmaceutical product and certainly safer than naturopathic medicines that have no requirements for purity or ingredients and no requirements for valid testing of their effectiveness and safety.

your parent makes an appointment for you to get the new measles vax but you catch measles before you get there and you have to be sick and confined to a dark room for 3-4 weeks having a fever, not eating and risking long term effects?

No measles vaccine in 1951. Fever – with delirium. Terrified my poor mother who couldn’t comfort me when the monsters were coming to get me. And all the shades were drawn in the house, but when I started getting better, I was allowed to look out the window at my playmates for a few minutes, after the streetlights came on. Oh, and I had the accompanying conjunctivitis. That was fun. I don’t understand people who wish illness on their children – or expose pregnant women to the illness causing everything from miscarriage to birth defects. I never will.

Prior to antibiotics, measles killed mainly by secondary bacterial opportunistic infections, usually pneumonia. In fact, in a much smaller population, measles killed around 15,000 some years in the early 20th Century. However, despite antibiotics, prior to the vaccine in 1963, between 400- 500 died, up to 2,000 became permanently disabled, seizure disorder, mental retardation, deafness and blindness and 50,000 were hospitalized. In addition, probably a million or so suffered high fevers, intense itching, malaise, anorexia, and more for a week or more, missing school and resulting in a parent staying home. Not a pretty picture and measles is just one of the vaccine-preventable childhood diseases.

In addition, measles is just as contagious today, so, given our population has doubled, one can reasonably assume the above numbers would to. And as microbes become more and more antibiotic resistant, also reasonable chance that more would die from the secondary pneumonias.

I personally know people who were hospitalized. I was fortunate, In the 1950s my father’s lower middle class income allowed my mother to stay home, cook healthy meals, and take care of me when I was sick. And I was lucky to go through ALL the vaccine-preventable diseases as far as I remember, and come out with no problems. Given I had great teachers and was reasonably intelligent, that I loved reading and school, I did OK; but I don’t assume that everyone is like me.

People just don’t understand that some really nasty vaccine-preventable diseases are but a plane flight away.

What if you’re my uncle and aunt in the 1960s, and you discover after marrying that you can’t have children, ever, because the male part of the equation is sterile due to mumps contracted as a teen?

What if you’re my father in the 1940s, and you’re an adolescent with suddenly no mother, faced with the task of dealing with the grief of younger siblings, and the intractable grief of your father? She contracted measles, then scarlet fever, then rheumatic fever, in quick succession as a child. Lived with a heart ailment and suffered a stroke giving birth to her last baby.

So many times, “pro-vaccine safety advocates” fail to see the long-term repercussions, the damage and sadness and pain that effects not just the sufferer but everyone who cares for him and never quite dissipates.

Denice & Ellie — shame on you for sharing those painful childhood memories. EVERYBODY knows that measles are benign!

Seriously — the spousal unit still has a t-shirt from the Marines that says “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger” but that’s for adults who have knowingly chosen the Corps’ peculiar masochism as a way of life. Antivaxxers believe that it is a good thing for small children to be sick, in pain, and utterly miserable for a week or so.

So, if we didn’t combine those vaccines into “too many too soon”, the kids would have to make a good number more trips to the doctor, and get a good number more shots (each vaccine individually; more doses for each disease). That’s a lot more line items on your medical bill, and more income for the doctor and more sales for the vaccine suppliers, yes?

Obviously, then, all those ‘vaccine safety’ extended schedule campaigners are just shills for Big Pharma, and Big Doctor. Merck really is the Devil.

As a naturopath, I encourage all my patients to get vaccinated. However, getting immunized can be a stress, albeit usually very small, on the immune system. You shouldn’t get vaccinated while sick with cold or flu. That isn’t alternative medicine. If you have a weak immune system for other reasons, doesn’t it follow that avoiding multiple vaccinations on the same visit is more risky for these people? We adjust medicine for infants and elderly, so maybe it would be prudent to spread vaccines also for these populations and for other persons with weak constitutions. I just don’t want that idea to make anti-vaccination folks more hesitant to participate in vaccination.

As a naturopath, I encourage all my patients to get vaccinated. However, getting immunized can be a stress, albeit usually very small, on the immune system. You shouldn’t get vaccinated while sick with cold or flu. That isn’t alternative medicine. If you have a weak immune system for other reasons, doesn’t it follow that avoiding multiple vaccinations on the same visit is more risky for these people? We adjust medicine for infants and elderly, so maybe it would be prudent to spread vaccines also for these populations and for other persons with weak constitutions. I just don’t want that idea to make anti-vaccination folks more hesitant to participate in vaccination.

However, the core problem here is not so much the documented fact that the naturopathy trade is anti-vaccine. The more fundamental problem is that it has no mechanism for self-correction.

In reality-based medicine, science is used to correct for errors. Andrew Wakefield published a fraudulent study making a false claim that vaccines cause autism, the scientific method was brought to bear, and now no competent doctor thinks that vaccines cause autism.

In naturopathy, the scientific method keeps throwing up ideologically unacceptable results, so naturopathy cannot, as a body corporate, defer to the scientific method as the way to separate truth from falsehood. As soon as you accept rigorous science as the final arbiter of truth, you have to abandon homeopathy, reiki and a whole bunch of other things, some of which are deeply embedded in the field.

I have yet to see a single concrete example of any therapy or product which has been abandoned wholesale by naturopathy after being shown to be useless or even dangerous. Perhaps you can provide one?

So the prevalence of the fallacious “too many too soon” belief in naturopaths would be a small but fixable problem if naturopaths deferred to reality. As it is, they will undoubtedly persist in this belief until some new guru comes along with some new trope (which will probably also be anti-vaccine, as that’s how it goes with gurus).

And that’s the problem. Naturopathy is not reality-based, it’s a religious movement and follows the teachings of self-selected gurus. There may indeed by parts of naturopathy which are accidentally correct, but none which are probably more correct than the reality-based medical community.

Some people win the lottery, but it does not make the lottery a sensible place to put your 401(k).

I have no doubt that you are a kind and sincere person who genuinely wants to help the sick. It is a crying shame that you have been conned into spending large sums learning what is largely nonsense. Britt has shown the way here. The only good naturopath is an ex-naturopath.

To qualify my comment: I am not suggesting that the current CDC guidelines are unsafe for children. I am a naturopath who advocates strenuously for following the CDC guidelines. This is an important public health issue! It frustrates me that other physicians — naturopathic and allopathic — are not onboard. From a public health perspective — there is no question here. The risk to benefit ratio for the good of the many —definitely outweigh the risks to the many AND to the individual. At least if done responsibly. I am just saying that the number of vaccinations given in one visit could be an issue in certain rare instances, but should not be a reason to question the CDC schedule per se.

PS: There is nothing that I was taught in naturopathic school that contradicts the CDC schedule. Those naturopaths that say stupid S**t are not saying it because they were taught it at school. They are just irresponsible or ignorant of the science or swayed by someone at some siminar or in some book or article they read on their own. I do not believe that ANY CNME naturopathic school teaches their students to go againt the CDC schedule. I did see a survey of naturopaths in my state that said about half of us went unquestionably with the CDC schedule, and most of the other half went with the CDC but with an alternative schedule if indicated.

While it heartens me to find one naturopath who is pro-vaccine, I’m sorry, but I can’t buy your claims about naturopaths and vaccines. I’ve come across far too many antivaccine naturopaths and far too few naturopaths who are anything resembling pro-vaccine:

It’s true that there are still far too many naturopaths that are anti-vaccine. It really bothers me, but I am not going back to school at my age to be an MD just so that I can be associated with like minded colleagues. Actually almost all of the naturopaths that I am familiar with are provaccine. Maybe like-minded docs are attracted to each other. Or maybe its a sign that the profession is rapidly changing, as I am a recent grad. I used to be pschology, and I can say that we had to study all the major schools of thought and therapy approaches and were tested in them. That doesn’t mean that the field of psychology advocates them. Some have been debunked but are still taught because it is a part of the field. At least part of its history. And even if a theory or therapy is not considered to be legit in its science, it doesn’t mean that nobody in psychology is allowed to use it. Freudian psychotherapy is not considered to be a scientically supported approach today. That doesn’t stop the profession from teaching it and testing it. And it is not necessarily an indictment on the profession that there are still licensed psychiatrists and psychologists that still practice it. So why hold it against the naturopathic profession that we still teach homeopathy or have a minority of docs that are antivaccine? I think we would be a better profession — a more scientific profession if we get onboard with vaccines just as psychology or psychiatry would be more scientific if they could eliminate the remaining docs that still embrace freudian psycholotherapy for more effective approaches. Maybe you have had limited exposure to provaccine naturopaths for the same reason self-preserving liberals know better than to be interviewed on foxnews. This blog is Not a friendly place for naturopaths to visit. I must be a bit masochistic to identify myself as a naturopath on this blog. Probably nothing I could say would change anybody’s mind about naturopaths. I don’t like participating in apologetics. It is like trying to talk to a religious fundamentalist. Waste of time. They are blinded by the need to believe from a certain point of view. I don’t see much difference between MDs and naturopaths in this department. If it is an honest discussion, then I am happy to participate. I think most naturopaths will avoid these kind of blogs because they feel it is a place to vent disdain for their profession rather than a place to have an open and contructive discussion. Most of time I think that only a radical naturoapth has the desire or need to enter the lion’s den. I am only here to say that we were not taught to be antivaccine, I don’t know many newly graduated naturoapths that are antivaccine, and I want those who like to blog against naturopaths to know I believe there are a lot more naturopaths who don’t use homeopathy or accept antivaccine rhetoric than your experience or reading may suggest. And it would be more constructive to work with us to improve the profession than to continue defamatory rhetoric against the profession as a whole. Naturopathy isn’t going to go away, so recognizing and supporting that element of the profession which is more rational will make the profession a more responsible profession to serve the public.
Try changing from: Homeopathy is quackery. Naturopathy teaches homeopathy. Therefore all naturopaths are quacks. ….to: Believing in homeopathy is quackery. Some naturopaths do not believe in homeopathy. Therefore some naturopaths are not quacks.
Not a perfect example, but hopefully you see my point.

Again, Mr. Barnett, you should work to make sure non-scientific things like homeopathy, acupuncture, reiki, etc are removed from naturopathy. Also tell Bastyr and other naturopathic schools to embrace vaccinations.

I need to weigh in briefly on the comment that naturopaths are not taught anything that contradicts the CDC schedule in accredited programs. I graduated from Bastyr in 2011, and I was definitely provided with information to help guide parents away from the CDC schedule. I bet you were, too.

You graduated from SCNM in 2009. I strongly suspect you know Matthew Baral (the self-proclaimed peds expert at SCNM) and perhaps he was your teacher. He has been the Chair of the Department of Pediatrics and Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine (SCNM) for the past 10 years. It is fun to note here that I, too, am a naturopathic peds “expert.” I completed one of the few naturopathic peds residencies accredited by BU. Had I remained in practice, I’d be eligible to sit for the new nat peds board cert exam.

Back to Baral, the expert who teaches naturopathic students:
Here is a link to a blog post of his suggesting parents should avoid or delay the Hep B vaccine. http://drmatthewbaral.com/archives/1558

And you’ve probably seen this post about the measles outbreak where he provides false equivalency to both sides of the vaccine “debate.” (There is no debate; the scientific and medical communities collectively agree vaccines are safe and effective for the vast majority of people.) http://drmatthewbaral.com/archives/1699

You will be disappointed to learn that the Dr. Sears Vaccine Book (the infamous alternative vaccine book) is listed twice. Additionally, we were assigned projects to discuss the “pros and cons” of vaccinations and asked to review information about the vaccine “debate.”

I asked Dr. Daniel Flanders (a real pediatrician) to look over my syllabi and provide me with his input about these vaccine research assignments. He stated, “What a missed opportunity to explore debates in science that are not yet settled: pros and cons of managing ADHD with psychostimulants, risks and benefits of circumcision, antibiotic use/overuse/emerging resistance, treating otitis media with antibiotics vs. watchful waiting. What’s the sense of pushing each and every student to scrutinize the list of trivial and/or extraordinarily rare vaccine side effects? I note serious anti-vaccine innuendo all over this syllabus.”

You are not pro-vaccine just because you believe in offering some vaccines, to some patients, at certain times. This type of thinking is really anti-vax at its core, and so are most naturopaths.

kevin: “So why hold it against the naturopathic profession that we still teach homeopathy…”

And routinely practice it.

“Try changing from: Homeopathy is quackery. Naturopathy teaches homeopathy. Therefore all naturopaths are quacks. ….to: Believing in homeopathy is quackery. Some naturopaths do not believe in homeopathy. Therefore some naturopaths are not quacks.”

It’s not just homeopathy, kevin. There is the inconvenient truth that naturopathy’s core beliefs are nonsensical. ND practices offer all manner of quackery besides homeopathy (a quick check of local offices finds stuff like “foot reflexology”, reiki and “fertility massage”, in addition to homeopathy).

The idea that we should ignore widespread deleterious aspects of a health “profession” in favor of the few good apples reminds me of “reform” chiropractors who get incensed when bad practices in the chiro field are discussed. The true reformers welcome such discussion and call out their backward and woo-prone colleagues.

The problem is more fundamental. Medicine is what it is because of the adoption of the scientific method as the arbiter of truth. Practices cherished for millennia have been ruthlessly cast aside because the evidence shows they do not work.

What makes naturopathy alternative, is that it rejects science as the arbiter of truth, in favour of tradition and belief. We already know that this, as an approach, guarantees you will be wrong, and remain wrong, and probably become more wrong over time. Including mainstream advice alongside the nonsense does not validate the nonsense.

What makes naturopathy distinct from medicine is the fundamental basis by which truth is separated from fiction. Medicine uses the scientific method, which as it happens is the only method that has ever been proven to consistently yield the correct result. Naturopathy uses the methods of religion: tradition, authority and belief.

If naturopathy had a functional method for separating right and wrong, I personally would have no problem with it. We know what would happen though, because we have seen it with osteopathy in the US. When you rely on the scientific method, you end up with medicine.

@MJD, if the immune response to a vaccine were some kind of “tipping point,” wouldn’t the immune response to the actual disease also cause your speculated results? So not only would they have the same results as vaccinating, they’d have the actaul disease on top of it! Seems like a great reason to vaccinate to me.

You write: “What makes naturopathy alternative, is that it rejects science as the arbiter of truth, in favour of tradition and belief. We already know that this, as an approach, guarantees you will be wrong, and remain wrong, and probably become more wrong over time.”

I don’t like absolutes. Of the literally 10s of thousands of treatments/cures developed by tradition, etc. a handful have actually been found to work many many years after their use began, e.g. quinine, digitalis, etc. so I would prefer a statement that the odds of a traditional, non-scientifically tested remedy working are minuscule.

You are more than right. Without vaccines, children would experience most, if not all, of the vaccine-preventable childhood diseases and flu. Any one them would tax the immune system and mitochondria of someone with deficiencies much more than any combination of killed and attenuated microbes. Just one. Imagine what would happen to a child with defective immune system when exposed to one after the other.

Apparently, this alleged pro-vaccine message hasn’t gotten through to some of the college’s graduates – like this ND:

“Should I worry about getting the flu?
… “Protect yourself, get the vaccine” is the message of the day: if you could die, why wouldn’t you vaccinate? It seems the government, the medical establishment and most of the mainstream media just can’t fathom why you wouldn’t…
we hold an alternative perspective on what is ideal for addressing the flu and preventing extreme illness and death…With respect to the risk of serious illness and death, homeopathy gives the practitioner additional tools to more fully understand the patient and thus predict such risks. These tools are typically associated with the more chronic aspect of disease and are traditionally known as “miasms”. We typically refer to them as Diatheses. The naturopathic and homeopathic practitioner can, by understanding the patient’s diathesis, recognize, for example, that if a person is inclined to have dangerous responses when ill, then he is at greater risk for developing serious complications in acute medical situations such as the flu. This type of person is termed in the homeopathic literature “Luetic”, which means he eliminates by destroying himself…
Homeopathic miasms direct the doctor how to treat individuals at risk without creating further complications. Thus the use of homeopathic remedies and naturopathic immune boosters is unlike vaccination. These options do not leave a patient worrying about the unwanted consequences of the treatment itself, but rather, help the patient to overcome the tendencies of his family and his own diathesis…
While many still practice “homeopathic vaccination,” I believe there are much better uses of this type of isopathy, such as using the isode of a certain vaccine to help a patient overcome a negative reaction to that particular vaccine, should there have been one. Until you’ve had the vaccine, there really is nothing to resonate with…

Repeated vaccinations are the partial culprit in many chronic illnesses.”

Britt,
Your experience of naturopathic medicine is very different from mine. The vaccine debate has represented a tiny fraction of my peds training. Our classes were almost entirely devoted to conventional pediatrics. Maybe 10% was particular to naturopathic practice. Same can be said of my other clinical courses. Homeopathy was a much bigger part of my total training that I would have chosen, but it was still a small fraction of the naturopathic therapy specific courses. And your previous comments on other blogs about naturopaths having less training in conventional medicine than PAs and NPs also does not fit my experience as I almost became an NP after chiropractic school. I did take several nursing courses, including from the MSN program, worked in the hospital, and was able to take the MSN level pharm training which was much less hours and definitely at a lower level than what I was taught at naturopathic school.

I’m inclined to take Kevin at his word, for now anyway, and cut him some slack. If we accept that even some chiros, like Sam H., are trying to weed out quackiness from their practice, some naturopaths probably are as well.

My guess is the ‘believe in homeopathy’ was just a ‘for example’ and hopefully the ‘more rational and responsible’ natuopaths Kevin assures us do in fact exists would take a similar position on the other common forms of woo haunting naturopathy as detailed in Orac’s post today on naturo licensing in MA: Scenar therapy, German detox footbaths, etc.

it would be more constructive to work with us to improve the profession than to continue defamatory rhetoric against the profession as a whole.

This is kind of true, depending on what we take ‘defaming the profession as a whole’ to mean. What is true of the whole as a whole, is not necessarily true of all of its component parts, but that’s how people too often tend to think. If we commit the Division Fallacy, we go from ‘naturopathy is too bogus to license’ to ‘every naturopath is bogus’, and Kevins rational/responsible clan feel too much heat. But if we have a proper understanding of ‘as a whole’, the two paths Kevin notes are not mutually contradictory.

That is, we can ‘work with rational/responsible naturopaths to improve the profession’, and even be nice to them [ 😉 ], while still challenging the legitimation of the ‘profession’. Let’s say Kevin practices what he preaches, and has x-number of naturo-pals who do the same. That’s hardly an argument for taking a softer stance toward naturopathy licensing legislation. In policy, we can’t separate out ‘good apples’ from a barrel with a significant percentage of ‘bad apples’ and assert that apples are fine for consumption, sui generis. We gotta say, ‘get the apple barrels out of the grocery store’. But since some folks are going to obtain and eat apples anyway, we can surely help identify the better apples, even as we recommend ‘better to eat oranges, regardless’. And I think a true ‘good apple’ would understand that’s how it has to be, not
take offence, and help in creating the fruit guide.
.

Can you post course descriptions/syllabi that would confirm that 90% of your naturopathic peds training was devoted to conventional pediatrics? That would help silence (or at least quiet down) doubters.

By the way, I am not engaging in “defamatory rhetoric” against naturopaths. Think of me as a holistic skeptic. I like to look at the whole field of naturopathy to determine where it has gone off the rails, rather than focusing on a disease symptom like antivaxxery.

If you weed out the quackiness from the practice of naturopathy, then they would have nothing left to do that isn’t done already by mainstream science-based doctors. They would, quite simply, cease to have any excuse to exist. They already have no legitimate reason to exist.

It’s sad in a way. All that time and money wasted on training, when the only useful thing that naturopaths do is tell their clients to take regular exercise and eat a decent diet. Unfortunately, that advice is typically served with a steaming pile of fetid nonsense.

On reflection, maybe I was slightly unfair on the utility of naturopaths.

If they have any self awareness and common sense, they would suggest the patient see a real doctor if there is any hint of a real illness. Also, the occasional naturopath might actually recommend that a patient receive the full recommended schedule of vaccinations.

If they have any self awareness and common sense, they would suggest the patient see a real doctor if there is any hint of a real illness. Also, the occasional naturopath might actually recommend that a patient receive the full recommended schedule of vaccinations.

If they had self-awareness and common sense they would not be naturopaths, and their patients should be seeing doctors not faith healers anyway.

I wonder how it would sound if someone said 90% of my training as an astronomer was in astronomy and 10% was in astrology? Or a chemist saying 90% of my training was in chemistry and 10% was in alchemy?

Juxtaposing training in medicine that, though not perfectly aligned with science (e.g. grandfathered in, etc.) does its best, with naturopathy with basically NO scientific basis, in my opinion, does NOT differ from the above examples.

To Mi Dawn
I never meant to imply that my peds training was comprehensive. I was just trying to explain the mix of content. I will try to find the memory stick from nine years ago that contains the syllabus.

To answer your quiz. The question is a bit insulting because the answer is obvious. The answer, given the information provided, is the ER because there is not enough time to go anywhere else if it turns out to be epiglotittis.

Our board exams give this kind of question must greater weight in scoring. Safety is paramount. And why I choose not to treat babies, small children, elderly, and persons whose health condition is critical or overly complicated.

I personally do think naturopaths should attempt to specialize in pediatrics unless they make a significant effort beyond becoming board certified in naturopathic pediatrics. I don’t think they should ever claim to treat cancer as an alternative to conventional medicine. Only as a compliment where appropriate. Never should they attempt to treat a mental illness by themselves unless it is minor anxiety or depression.

I think most naturopaths who also embrace conventional medicine should be able to treat minor acute and most uncomplicated chronic conditions.

I would have not hesitated to become an MD had it been more open to CAM. I know most in this blog do agree, but that would reflect the reason behind the problem I faced. Many integrative MDs that I have met have expressed a frustration with their medical boards and non-supportive colleagues.

Most people want a doctor who is can inform them about or refer them for complimentalry/alternative medicine. It is because of a lack of education and acceptance of CAM in conventional medicine that I did not choose it as my profession.

I didn’t choose naturopathic because I had a problem with conventional medicine. I believe that a doc who has a foot in both worlds in in the best position to steer people away from making bad decisions about CAM, including the inappropriate use of CAM instead of conventional medicine.

Patients avoid discussing their use of CAM or their decision to use CAM instead of what their doctor would recommend if they think their doctor has a bad attitude toward CAM. Naturopaths like me are a part of the solution to that problem.

I think that I am likely to do more good to get people to vaccinate by practicing integrative medicine in the trenches than folks who blog with sarcastic attacks. I plead with you to be more surgical in your attack on naturopathic medicine so that your attacks do not backfire on your noble goal, and that you don’t pull the professional rug out from under those in my profession that are trying to reform the profession and steer patients in the right direction.

To Mr. Harrison,
The 10% of peds that was not conventional medicine does not mean that it had no value. The assumption that if it isn’t in conventional medicine standard practice it has zero science — zero value — is absurd. I have spend endless hours surveying research in CAM. There is a ton of support for many pieces.

I am not saying the debate is over, but it sounds like you are saying that. Healthcare is too complex for such a level of confidence. I don’t find it becoming of someone who claims the mantle of science to exaggerate or speak in absolutes.

A study of the history of medicine, and the history of science in general should caution anyone from making such categorical / sweeping statements.

I recently stumbled across to this:
Cragg and Newman 2012
“Thus, in the area of cancer, over the time frame from around the 1940s to date, of the 175 small molecules, 131, or 74.8%, are other than “S” (synthetic), with 85, or 48.6%, actually being either natural products or directly derived therefrom.”

To Orac,
To suggest that there may be a situation where it may be prudent to alter the vaccination schedule is not anti-vax.
I like to listen to board review and other talks in areas of my emphasis as I lie in bed before I fall asleep.

Last night it was: Update – Clinical Pearls Rheumatology with John Davis – professor of Rheumatology Mayo med school. He was talking about deviating from the vaccination norm in certain circumstances.

To say that there is never a reason to question the schedule could be irresponsible.

Whoa. I don’t know where you guys find the time to do this back and forth. I am going to have to take a break from this blog. Besides – I feel like I have been on trial in North Korea.

*Most* people want information on CAM? I’m a people, and I certainly don’t. In fact, I refused to see one of the NPs at my PCP’s office because he was enamored of chiropracty and pushed it whenever he could.

A pain management doctor was recommended to me by a friend, but I declined when I found she used acupuncture as part of her treatments. If someone is going to stick needles in my shoulders, they damned well better contain cortisone.

I can assure you, I want no part of CAM except for those things that really aren’t CAM: advice on exercise, diet, checking on my psychological well-being, asking about falling (because I’m old and unsteady on my feet). IOW, things that real doctors do, if they are worth their diplomas.

“Most people want a doctor who is can inform them about or refer them for complimentalry/alternative medicine.”

Bolleaux!

Most people, IME, want something that will work and sort out whatever their medical problem is.

Which is where pretty much all of CAM falls down: I have seen little evidence for any effects over and above placebo. And anyone claiming efficacy for homeopathy, reiki and acupuncture should start re-writing all our physics, chemistry, biology, anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, et-bleedin’-cetera text books and claiming all their Nobel prizes and the like.

If or when that happens I might start giving some credence to those things, but I have already been waiting most of my life and it isn’t happening yet…

Embracing the likes of homeopathy and reiki does little for the credibility of “naturopathy”.

“Most people want a doctor who is can inform them about or refer them for complimentalry/alternative medicine.”

I’ll say it differently. Any physician who tries to refer me to any CAM nonsense ends up fired. There are many, many, many physicians around here, even in this rural city near Shreveport.
As one neurologist has recently learned, I’m far from shy about firing a physician who isn’t looking out for his patient. While he’s now fighting his peer in the same practice, his own words recommending we seek another physician are now biting firmly upon his gluteus maximus. Note to self, call the insurance company to ensure a firm grip of those words.
In that physican’s case, he refused to properly fill out the insurance company forms for diagnostic imagery and now that our primary has managed to do his job for him there, suddenly has an interest. As he suggested we seek another professional, we’ll follow doctor’s instructions and insist upon another professional.

Kevin: “I think that I am likely to do more good to get people to vaccinate by practicing integrative medicine in the trenches than folks who blog with sarcastic attacks… I don’t know where you guys find the time to do this back and forth.”

Shades of Jay Gordon, whose habit was to post repeated, lengthy screeds on his noble vax-cautious practice and then scold others for wasting their time while he was out saving lives.

“To suggest that there may be a situation where it may be prudent to alter the vaccination schedule is not anti-vax.”

Actually, there are well-known indications for not strictly following the vaccination schedule, which involve such things as immunosuppression and prior vaccine reactions. What is not “prudent” is arbitrarily stretching out/delaying/avoiding vaccines because of bogus concerns like avoiding exposure to “toxins”.

“I feel like I have been on trial in North Korea.”

You poor dear. But didn’t you mean the Spanish Inquisition?

When and if Kevin does return, it’d be nice if he’d post details of his peds courses, to verify if they were actually 90% real medicine.

I’ll give Kevin credit. At least he recognized epiglottitis and recommended the ER. I figured that question, similar to the one posted from the actual ND boards, would be easy enough. Since I’m not familiar with pseudomedicine, I couldn’t list the possible “medications” that might otherwise have been recommended. (And I couldn’t be bothered to waste my time looking them up.)

I have too many friends who are into CAM. While I think essential oils can smell nice, massages are wonderful, and some herbals have use (I’m very fond of ginger tea for an upset stomach, for example), there are too many things that aren’t plausible. I end up keeping my mouth shut to avoid unpleasant battles at get-togethers.

One example that drives me nuts; some friends have twins, who are 7 years old. Totally unvaccinated to avoid “toxins”. Those poor kids have to take 15-20 pills a day (supplements). They used to fight against it, but now they take them without fussing because they’ve learned they’ll get them no matter what. But they don’t eat much – how can they, after all those pills in their tummies?

You write: “To Mr. Harrison,
The 10% of peds that was not conventional medicine does not mean that it had no value. The assumption that if it isn’t in conventional medicine standard practice it has zero science — zero value — is absurd. I have spend endless hours surveying research in CAM. There is a ton of support for many pieces.

I am not saying the debate is over, but it sounds like you are saying that. Healthcare is too complex for such a level of confidence. I don’t find it becoming of someone who claims the mantle of science to exaggerate or speak in absolutes.”

First, it is Dr. Harrison, not Mr. Harrison; but that aside, if “There is a ton of support for many pieces,” that is, valid scientific-based methodology, then it would NOT be considered CAM, it would be scientifically-based medicine. I really doubt if you, given what you have written, have the basic understanding of scientific methodology, scientifically-based causal inference, epidemiology and biostatistics to know what constitutes “support.” Just because there are “tons” of papers doesn’t mean they meet scientific standards of reliability and validity. It is NOT whether it is currently incorporated in standard medical practice or not; but whether it is based on scientific research or not.

A number of CAM have been investigated using valid methodologies and none passed the test.

Oh look St. Andy has weighed in on Miller’s paper, at (where else?) Age of Hating Autism.

Andrew Wakefield on VAERS Analysis
VAERSBy Andrew Wakefield

Neil Miller’s analysis of the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) [Combining Childhood Vaccines at One Visit Is Not Safe, Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons Volume 21 Number 2 Summer 2016, pp 47-49] provides two red flags for vaccine injury that have long been suspected by vaccine safety advocates—associations between first, the number of vaccines administered at the same visit and the risk of hospitalization and death, and second, younger age at the time of the vaccine adverse reaction and a higher risk of hospitalization and death.

Miller’s first real-world finding belies the entirely theoretical proposition—dangerously interpreted as carte blanche to give multiple shots simultaneously—that a child can receive ten to one hundred thousand vaccine antigens at the same time.

His second finding on younger age at vaccination and risk of injury are entirely consistent with the true findings of the CDC’s study that looked at age of first MMR and autism risk.[1] African American boys and children of all races who were developmentally normal to age 12 months (‘isolated’ autism) had a highly significantly increased risk of autism following MMR on schedule (12-18 months) compared with those receiving it later. These facts were deliberately concealed for 14 years by the CDC authors and their superiors.

The second finding is also consistent with the observation that it was younger children who were at greater risk of meningitis with SmithKline Beecham’s dangerous MMR vaccine containing the Urabe AM/9 strain of mumps.[2] The implications for this finding were completely ignored by the authorities.

Miller provides an informative history of the value of the VAERS system in picking up adverse reactions signals, reminding us at the same time of the huge under reporting of adverse reactions by medical personnel and the apparent reluctance by government investigators to link serious adverse reactions to vaccines. The value of VAERS is the red flags that it throws up. It should be used to generate hypotheses that lead to definitive studies and answers that we can believe in. We now know from Dr. William Thompson, the CDC whistleblower, that his agency cannot be trusted to do such studies. Congress has an obligation to act immediately to create an independent vaccine safety agency, completely outside of Health and Human Services and firewalled from pharmaceutical company influence.

It’s a true shame to medical profession that such dangerous individuals as Orac can mislead naïve people, by sharing his narrow-mindedness and rigid dogma as the ultimate unquestionable truth. A new GOD?!

Oh my goodness, Marta @234, you are so right! It is so very narrow-minded of ORAC (and the rest of us here) to not want children to die or be maimed by communicable diseases.
/snark

Would you like to be paralyzed by polio? Disfigured by smallpox? Deafened or blinded by mumps? Or die of a half-dozen other things? I’ve read that tetanus is a particularly terrible way to die. Of course you don’t want any of these things! And I wouldn’t want them for you.

But when you say that Orac is dangerous because he supports vaccination, then you are saying that you want all these terrible things to happen to other people, specifically children.

@Marta – Just a friendly tip* – it really helps to say what you disagree with, why you disagree with it, what you believe to be more correct, and what evidence shows your position to be more accurate than what you argue against.

* Since I’m sure you’re young and inexperienced and could benefit from a little coaching.

Deaths from infectious diseases have declined markedly in the United States during the 20th century (Figure 1). This decline contributed to a sharp drop in infant and child mortality (1,2) and to the 29.2-year increase in life expectancy (2). In 1900, 30.4% of all deaths occurred among children aged less than 5 years; in 1997, that percentage was only 1.4%.

I have a hard time with this: IF VAERS is a”problematic database”(which I totally agree) WHO IS A RELIABLE SOURCE TO KEEP AND MONITOR REPORTS of any possible adverse reactions from vaccines? As it is they (VAERS) are a passive reporting system and don’t like to disclose what a reaction might look like – many doctors are not aware they are supposed to report all adverse reactions to VAERS – many haven’t even heard of VAERS – VAERS itself estimates that less than 10% of all adverse reactions are ever reported. When asked about additional studies to be done – long term combined schedule, the vaccine manufacturers stated they didn’t have the funds for such studies – yet they have funds for tons of advertising… So if not VAERS, who is monitoring this for any potential harm?

“VAERS is a problematic database” – which I agree – but IF NOT VAERS, WHO SHOULD MONITOR FOR ADVERSE REACTIONS? How can we keep and monitor reliable records to make sure there is no problem with these – call them what they are – “pharmaceuticals”? Are we really doing accurate risk / benefit analysis? – A Concerned parent who has witnessed adverse reactions to vaccinations

VAERS is designed to provide an open system to report adverse events that may possibly be related to vaccines.

That very design means that events reported in VAERS cannot reliably be presumed to be caused by vaccines.

2. There are other ways of knowing how dangerous vaccines are, and the answer is “not very”.

Based on the NVIC compensations, the risk of a serious long term event is 1 in a million orvless.

And there have been many big studies of vaccinated children. Pooled together in a recent meta study, they show vaccinated children are just as healthy as unvaccinated children, except that they don’t get the diseases they are protected from.

3. These detection methods can detect real side effects, like the narcolepsy problem with the flu vaccine. Research is showing this is a real effect related to the vaccine design and will probably lead to changes to make vaccines even safer.

The Vaccine Safety Datalink is still relying on reports from VAERS as it’s “early warning system” – VEARS which is keeping a passive low-profile. compare the advertising to get your vaccines vs publicly disclosed information about possible adverse events, VAERS, and the NVICP – there is a disconnect –
From The Vaccine Safety Datalink page (CDC website):
“CDC and FDA continuously monitor the safety of vaccines after they are approved. If a problem is found with a vaccine, CDC and FDA will inform health officials, health care providers, and the public.
CDC uses three systems to monitor vaccine safety:
The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) – an early warning system that helps CDC and FDA monitor problems following vaccination. Anyone can report suspected vaccine reactions and issues to VAERS.
The Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) – a collaboration between CDC and several health care organizations that allows ongoing monitoring and proactive searches of vaccine-related data.
The Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment (CISA) Project – a partnership between CDC and several medical centers that conduct clinical research on vaccine-associated health risks in certain groups of people.”
and based on recent evidence about the CDC’s studies – we have a problem.

I would like to see an article coming from you that discusses the reasons why the anti-vacc community doesn’t have much supporting evidence. Is it maybe because or big pharma and government pours funding into pro-vaccination research because that is where they make big, big money?? Us, the nobodies from the other side are rapidly growing in number, which will bring in more funding to support the research so back off. It is easy to write articles that agree with the mafia alliances.

LoveToResearch @245: And if you can come up with the budget for this without taking away from any other program at the CDC (or state and local Public Health departments) then I am all for it. There is also post-license surveillance by the companies that make the vaccines, but I don’t know how some people would feel about that.

Roxana @247: Are you familiar with Occam’s razor? It’s a problem solving principle (a logic model) that says when presented with possible scenarios, pick the one with the fewest assumptions.
To apply it to your question “why is there little evidence supporting the anti-vax community”, we could choose to believe that it is some sort of complex collection of collusion and malice on the part of many, many people (many assumptions), or we could believe that the evidence simply does not exist because it was not there when anyone looked (fewer assumptions).

Also, I try not to start from a position where I assume that all people are nasty, greedy, or evil, because it is almost never the case, and it’s just a sad way to go through life.

the reasons why the anti-vacc community doesn’t have much supporting evidence

Why they don’t have evidence? A simple answer would be “they’re wrong”.
it would be more interesting to learn why people remain in the “anti-vacc community” despite that absence of supporting evidence. It is almost as if they made up their minds in advance and “evidence” is simply not an issue, or something they fabricate afterwards for cosmetic effect..

The thing that you fear the most is upon you. The 99% is now aware of the corruption and lies from the top. People are beginning to realize they are the slaves without chain. The system that you have bought into and spent your life building for your return on investment is now in jeopardy. You see rioting, looting, civil unrest, protests and marches all across the country. Things have even turned violent in many states. The masses do not trust the government or the industry funded scientists. Where do the elitist flee to when the peasants revolt? They leave the people like Orac behind to feed the angry mob. Make certain your commission check is worth what it is going to cost you in the end.

You see rioting, looting, civil unrest, protests and marches all across the country. Things have even turned violent in many states. The masses do not trust the government or the industry funded scientists.

Name 2 states where there have been violent protest against the government and industry due to “corruption and lies from the top” (excluding ALF loons and BLM protest).

Sorry I don’t have all of the shoot-em-up lingo down, but I am cool with that. I see no reason to research weapons when I have a perfectly good grocery store down the street. I also do not have to prove my masculinity due to my lack of a Y-chromosome.

As far as research goes, I did not see much in your conspiracy spouting screed about riots and what not. Perhaps if you wish to discuss actual scientific evidence like an adult between playing with ordnance and emoting testosterone just provide the PubMed indexed studies showing that any vaccine on the American pediatric schedule causes more harm than the disease.

Why do we even bother? Americans don’t want vaccines,parks or science. (I do, but I’m obviously not an American, despite being born in the US.) Maybe the best solution is just to cancel vaccines and science courses, and close all the parks to visitors for years to come. (especially from Nevada or Idaho.) I wonder if the anti-vaccers would shut up then. Probably not, since most of them are just fine with dead kids. I imagine Concerned would just shrug if one of his kids died from tetanus, mumps or rubella or an armed schoolmate.

There are literally millions of unvaccinated people in the US. And hundreds of millions that their vaccines have expired since they have not recieved boosters or updates in decades. Yet in the past ten years more than 15,000 people have died from diahrea. But if you add all the deaths in the last ten years of mumps, measles, rubella and small pox it does not even equal 1% of the diahrea total. So maybe you intellectual types should be spending more time fear mongering the general public on the excessive dangers of dehydration from the shits. But instead you spend hours on this issue as if it was a pandemic. You are all ridiculous.

As a matter of fact I do have a skin apron. I use it when welding because it is good at retarding fire. I also have a nice amount of skin belts and boots. Even my wallet is skin. Most people refer to them as tanned hide or leather though. But it is in fact skin of the various animals.

Concerned: Dude, do you know what two of the causes of excessive diarrhea are? Rotavirus and diptheria. Do you know how we avoid getting them? I’ll give you a hint, it starts with a v. (There’s also dysentery, but you don’t care about that, because it’s mostly a tropical disease, which means that mostly the babies of people you hate die from it.)

Pheobe: You aren’t doing this pro bono are you?
Actually, I am, since poking the trolls used to be amusing.

Okay, another thing that I am cool with of my ignorance of its existence.

The main question, if one is speaking of being part of some “percentage,”* is whether more people are likely to be able to pick up an Ed Gein reference or to be spending an afternoon blabbering incoherently about The Impending Revolution here while crowing about using a Kevlar garment for the fastidious cleaning of a shotgun shell reloader** and regurgitating an Occupod slogan.

If “the 99%” is supposed to refer to income disparity,*** I’m pretty sure that Orac doesn’t count. And heaven help Internet Tough Guy if there are more people below him in this distribution. Amish Internecine rake fights would make The Revolution awfully prone to messiness.

* The rest of the bell curve draws itself.
** Should’ve included the “Jr.”
*** See the first footnote.

Phoebe while I appreciate your attempt to help politicalguineapig, the scarier “sounding” diseases you have mentioned are just that. While they may sound scary and decades ago caused concern in the last decade in the USA there has been less than 10 deaths attributed to the total of these diseases disputed the fact that millions are not immune by vaccine or naturally. My ods of dying from being struck by lighting are 50 times more likely than to die of polio in the US. I guess the need to sell me some lightning insurance or a grounded tin foil hat.

I don’t think that the mumps vaccine was ever clinically justified, it just was never a very problematic infection. Actually, I think it is kinda cute when someone has mumps. They look like a squirrel with with a mouth full of nuts!

We have water treatment facilities now, and horses are no longer shitting in the streets. Perhaps we could get rid of the MMR, or at least the Mumps and Rubella fractions of it.

BTW, the “skin apron” is something that happens when an obese person loses weight.

While the Amish do use rakes in their garden most are avid hunters and many have gun collections. In fact their are nonumber of registered gun owners in united states more guns than there are people in the USA and this is just counting registered legally owned guns. So I doubt that fakes would be the weapon of choice. I however do not condone violence. I would hope that the disparity in power and privilege can be bridged to a degree enough to slow the angry masses. Maybe this election cycle will provide hope for peace.

Orac speaks, with more fear mongering. This is from the CDC and when they say rarely infertility they mean less than ten cases in ten years. Q: I got the vaccine but still got mumps. Does this mean the vaccine doesn’t work?

A: MMR vaccine prevents most, but not all, cases of mumps and complications caused by the disease. People who have received two doses of the MMR vaccine are about nine times less likely to get mumps than unvaccinated people who have the same exposure to mumps virus. However, some people who receive two doses of MMR can still get mumps, especially if they have prolonged, close contact with someone who has the disease. If a vaccinated person does get mumps, they will likely have less severe illness than an unvaccinated person.

Before there was a vaccine, mumps was a common childhood disease in the United States. In some cases, the disease caused complications, such as permanent deafness in children and, occasionally, swelling of the brain (encephalitis), which in rare cases resulted in death. From year to year, the number of mumps cases can range from roughly a couple hundred to a couple thousand. In some years, there are more cases of mumps than usual because of outbreaks. See Mumps Cases and Outbreaks for more information.

Q: Is mumps a serious disease?

A: Mumps can be serious, but most people with mumps recover completely in a few weeks. While infected with mumps, many people feel tired and achy, have a fever, and swollen salivary glands on the side of the face. Others may feel extremely ill and be unable to eat because of jaw pain, and a few will develop serious complications. Men and adolescent boys can develop pain or swelling in their testicles, which rarely results in sterility. Inflammation of the protective membranes covering the brain and spinal cord (meningitis) and loss of hearing can also occur, and in rare cases, this hearing loss can be permanent. The most serious complication is inflammation of the brain (encephalitis), which can lead to death or permanent disability.

Concerned: ” While they may sound scary and decades ago caused concern in the last decade in the USA there has been less than 10 deaths attributed to the total of these diseases disputed the fact that millions are not immune by vaccine or naturally.”

And the manly man exposes the depths of his testosterone fueled intelligence.

Here is the reality on this planet, and not Htrae (where you might be considered a bit fay): the reason there are so few deaths from polio is that a great majority of the population of the USA has been vaccinated with the OPV, IPV or a combination of both.

This raises the population’s immunity to polio. Something that you are getting free ride on. Let us check a summary of some recent data (that is an HTML link, click on it and you will get another web page). It says:

Your next move is tell us how you came up “millions are not immune by vaccine or naturally.” If you do not want to post HTML links, then just post the PubMed ID number. Be sure to tell us what that percentage those “millions” are of the entire US population (close to 350 million).

In 1968 during a mumps epidemic I got mumps for a second time. Apparently getting mumps twice was so common back then there was a “old wives’ tale” that claimed you can get twice if it only affected one side of the face. That was a bold faced lie, since I remember equal pain on both sides.

What kind of testosterone fulled “logic” thinks the vaccine should work better to provide immunity than the actual disease? Oh, it must be in the same place where you think the Amish are representative of the entire population.

Those who are observant have noticed a dangerous trend in the United States, as well as worldwide, and that is the resorting of various governments at different levels to mandating forced vaccination upon the public at large. My State of Mississippi has one of the most-restrictive vaccine-exemption laws in the United States, where exemptions are allowed only upon medical recommendation. Ironically, this is only on paper, as many have had as many as three physicians, some experts in neurological damage caused by vaccines, provide written calls for exemption, only to be turned down by the State’s public-health officer.

Worse are the States, such as Massachusetts, New Jersey and Maryland, where forced vaccinations have either been mandated by the courts, the state legislature, or have such legislation pending. All of such policies strongly resemble those policies found in National Socialist empires, Stalinist countries, or Communist China.

When public-health officers are asked for the legal justification for such draconian measures as forcing people to accept vaccines that they deem either a clear and present danger to themselves and their loved ones or have had personal experience with serious adverse reactions to such vaccines, they usually resort to the need to protect the public.

One quickly concludes that if the vaccines are as effective as being touted by the public-health officials, then why should one fear the unvaccinated? Obviously the vaccinated would have at least 95% protection. This question puts them in a very difficult position. Their usual response is that a “small” percentage of the vaccinated will not have sufficient protection and would still be at risk. Now, if they admit what the literature shows, that vaccine failure rates are much higher than the 5% they claim, they must face the next obvious question – then why should anyone take the vaccine if there is a significant chance it will not protect?

When pressed further, they then resort to their favorite justification, the Holy Grail of the vaccine proponents – herd immunity. This concept is based upon the idea that 95% (and some now say 100%) of the population must be vaccinated to prevent an epidemic. The percentages needing vaccination grows progressively. I pondered this question for some time before the answer hit me. Herd immunity is mostly a myth and applies only to natural immunity – that is, contracting the infection itself.

Is Herd Immunity Real?

In the original description of herd immunity, the protection to the population at large occurred only if people contracted the infections naturally. The reason for this is that naturally-acquired immunity lasts for a lifetime. The vaccine proponents quickly latched onto this concept and applied it to vaccine-induced immunity. But, there was one major problem – vaccine-induced immunity lasted for only a relatively short period, from 2 to 10 years at most, and then this applies only to humoral immunity. This is why they began, silently, to suggest boosters for most vaccines, even the common childhood infections such as chickenpox, measles, mumps, and rubella.

Then they discovered an even greater problem, the boosters were lasting for only 2 years or less. This is why we are now seeing mandates that youth entering colleges have multiple vaccines, even those which they insisted gave lifelong immunity, such as the MMR. The same is being suggested for full-grown adults. Ironically, no one in the media or medical field is asking what is going on. They just accept that it must be done.

That vaccine-induced herd immunity is mostly myth can be proven quite simply. When I was in medical school, we were taught that all of the childhood vaccines lasted a lifetime. This thinking existed for over 70 years. It was not until relatively recently that it was discovered that most of these vaccines lost their effectiveness 2 to 10 years after being given. What this means is that at least half the population, that is the baby boomers, have had no vaccine-induced immunity against any of these diseases for which they had been vaccinated very early in life. In essence, at least 50% or more of the population was unprotected for decades.

If we listen to present-day wisdom, we are all at risk of resurgent massive epidemics should the vaccination rate fall below 95%. Yet, we have all lived for at least 30 to 40 years with 50% or less of the population having vaccine protection. That is, herd immunity has not existed in this country for many decades and no resurgent epidemics have occurred. Vaccine-induced herd immunity is a lie used to frighten doctors, public-health officials, other medical personnel, and the public into accepting vaccinations.

When we examine the scientific literature, we find that for many of the vaccines protective immunity was 30 to 40%, meaning that 70% to 60% of the public has been without vaccine protection. Again, this would mean that with a 30% to 40% vaccine-effectiveness rate combined with the fact that most people lost their immune protection within 2 to 10 year of being vaccinated, most of us were without the magical 95% number needed for herd immunity. This is why vaccine defenders insist the vaccines have 95% effectiveness rates.

Without the mantra of herd immunity, these public-health officials would not be able to justify forced mass vaccinations. I usually give the physicians who question my statement that herd immunity is a myth a simple example. When I was a medical student almost 40 years ago, it was taught that the tetanus vaccine would last a lifetime. Then 30 years after it had been mandated, we discovered that its protection lasted no more than 10 years. Then, I ask my doubting physician if he or she has ever seen a case of tetanus? Most have not. I then tell them to look at the yearly data on tetanus infections – one sees no rise in tetanus cases. The same can be said for measles, mumps, and other childhood infections. It was, and still is, all a myth.

As far as the statement of the assumption of my free ride on herd immunity. I and my children were fully vaccinated. However I had blood titters testing done for me and my wife due to up comming travel. I was alarmed to find that just in our middle age we had lost all of our supposed lifelong immunity due to the vaccines we recieved. The doctor said without constant boosters every 2 years throughout our lives the protection fails within 2 to 10 years. I said no adults I know recieve boosters. He then said millions of people are unprotected. And that my friend is what sent me down his rabbit hole. See I am pro vaccine. Yet I would like to be able to have assurity of their effectiveness. That is hard to find since the truth is stretched so far that facts are hard to find.

It is estimated by the CDC that the rotavirus is responsible for one third of the diarrhea deaths in the US each year. So that would roughly equal 500 and if 90% of the population is vaccinated that would mean that up to 450 people died from the shits after being vaccinated for it. Yet all we every hear about on the news is measles or mumps outbreaks. Please enlighten me with you awesomeness on the reason for this?

@Concerned: First, New Jersey has no forced vaccine program. Since I live here, I am well aware of the requirements. No one drags you out to be vaccinated. You don’t want to have them? Don’t get a job that requires them. The state doesn’t force anyone. Don’t want them? Homeschool your children or send them to one of the germ factories where they aren’t required.

Second: as we are discovering, apparently almost no immunity is for life. Those of us who have had pertussis, mumps, measles, rubella, chicken pox have discovered when titres are done that we may or may not be immune any more. So even having *had* the disease does not guarantee life-long immunity. Human bodies are unique, and immunologists continue to learn more as time progresses. At this time of my life, I’d rather have a vaccine than go through the disease.

As far as being a medical student 40 years ago and learning it was taught that the tetanus vaccine would last a lifetime. Then 30 years after it had been mandated, we discovered that its protection lasted no more than 10 years. Then, I ask my doubting physician if he or she has ever seen a case of tetanus? Most have not. I then tell them to look at the yearly data on tetanus infections – one sees no rise in tetanus cases. The same can be said for measles, mumps, and other childhood infections. It was, and still is, all a myth. – I was a nursing student about that time. Even before then, when I was in high school, we were aware tetanus shots didn’t give you immunity for life. So your medical school must have been really bad.

As a nursing student, I saw tetanus. It wasn’t pretty. I saw epiglottitis. It was terrifying. I saw chicken pox many times, including a pregnant woman in ICU who died. I was lucky and never saw mumps, measles or rubella. Or a baby with congenital rubella syndrome. I grew up and went to college in the midwest, in the 1980s. And I went to a major university, which is why we tended to see the scary stuff. Maybe you didn’t go to a place where those people were cared for.

Your doctor sounds like a quack. Yes, you may need boosters. But not every 2 years. And since we are finding “life-long immunity from the disease” isn’t life-long either, do you want to go through the disease again?

I’m sorry you don’t know any adults who receive boosters. Let me introduce myself. I do. My adult children do. All my family, my ex-husband’s family, most of my friends do. Many people here who comment do. You need to make more friends outside the quack world.

Dammit. Blockquote fail. The paragraph where the bolding is was supposed to say:

As far as your being a medical student 40 years ago and learning

it was taught that the tetanus vaccine would last a lifetime. Then 30 years after it had been mandated, we discovered that its protection lasted no more than 10 years. Then, I ask my doubting physician if he or she has ever seen a case of tetanus? Most have not. I then tell them to look at the yearly data on tetanus infections – one sees no rise in tetanus cases. The same can be said for measles, mumps, and other childhood infections. It was, and still is, all a myth.

– I was a nursing student about that time. Even before then, when I was in high school, we were aware tetanus shots didn’t give you immunity for life. So your medical school must have been really bad.

Ohhhh…screw you. I’m so fricking tired of the “pharma shill” tag. EVERY FREAKING TIME you guys can’t support your position you pull it out. I don’t get paid by pharma. At all. And I’m sick and tired of the quacks and jerks.

@Concered:
1) You claim that vaccination is mandatory in the U.S. It isn’t.
2) You say:

Herd immunity is mostly a myth and applies only to natural immunity – that is, contracting the infection itself.

Strange then, that in communities with high vaccination levels, children who aren’t yet vaccinated rarely get the diseases.
3) You claim:

The boosters were lasting for only 2 years or less.

Also false.
4) As for:

if 90% of the population is vaccinated that would mean that up to 450 people died from the shits after being vaccinated for it.

According to Wikipedia:

The vaccine first became available in the United States in 2006.

That means that probably most of the U.S. is not vaccinated against rotavirus.
TL:DR Your comments are the usual mix of half-truths, distortions and falsities that we’ve come to know and recognise from antivaxxers. You are NOT pro-vaccine, you are antivaccine.

So that would roughly equal 500 and if 90% of the population is vaccinated that would mean that up to 450 people died from the shits after being vaccinated for it.

I’m curious: how did you get the idea that 90% of the population is vaccinated for rotavirus? It isn’t one of the vaccines required for school entry, and the vaccine has only been around since 1998, so the majority of adults likely have never had it. I would be very surprised if even 50% of the population has had the rotavirus vaccine.

Oh dear, Internet Tough Guy has been reduced to whining like a bitch in heat. Maybe he could stick one of those empty shells on his dong and see how far he can launch it. I’m sure that, with practice, this would be a memorable power among the comic-book superheroes of the revolution.

Concerned: Please enlighten me with you awesomeness on the reason for this?

Well, personally, I think your math is waaay off. If 450 people died from diarrhea in a year in the US, especially if many of them were kids, the news would be all over it. Also, as MiDawn said, rotavirus is a fairly new vaccine, and unless one works in a job where encountering fecal matter is common, (or is a new parent) rotavirus isn’t a disease that most adults would think about.

PB: Blaylock is stone stupid and a money grubbing loser besides. Chris has more intelligence in their little toe than that guy does.

I would listen to the neurotoxicologist over a psychopathic-Pharma-apologist, such a Chris, anyday of the week.”

Blaylock was never a neurotoxicologist, he retired as a neurosurgeon a decade ago. He has been posting his senile idiocy ever since then, including claiming an association to a medical school that he did not remember the name of.

By the way, try something more original than the old stale brain dead Pharma Shill Gambit. Next time try posting PubMed indexed studies by reputable qualified researchers.

“Concerned”, instead of using unattributed cut/paste idiocy. That made you look like an even bigger fool.

It appears that the body burden for AL is 100mg/70kg with a daily uptake of 36.4 mg. Which means the body excretes 36.4 mg/70kg daily to stay in balance. Other metals at or near the same level: copper 100, lead 120, Niobium 100, Rubidium 1200, Strontium 140, Tellurium 600, Zinc 2,300 and Zirconium 250.

With all these metals (and there many others) in your body, I think you should start chelation therapy immediately.

Why would they load the placebo in all testing and trials with the same amount of aluminum? It could be that they want to find the same effects in placebo as the item being tested so there is no causation link.

Assuming that the USDA is correct, we have .1mg/kg/day of ingested aluminum. Multiply this by the absorption factor of .03 and we get 3μg/kg/day, Multiply this by 365/2 and we get 548μg/kg/day.

Assuming a 4kg baby, we have about 2.2mg of absorbed aluminum for the first six months of life. Compare this with the 4.4mg injected directly into the body from vaccines during the first 6 months of life¹.

So we have a situation where the contibution of Aluminum from vaccines is double the contribution from diet in the newborn.

Good call. PB was good, but he slipped up. (I won’t say how.) Yes, it’s Fendlesworth again, to whom I say: Nice try. You had me fooled for a few hours. Oh, and goodbye, PB/Fendlesworth/etc. Sock puppetting is grounds for immediate banning.

Now that the nitwit is gone – I think it would be interesting, though nearly impossible, to compare infant oral intake of aluminum in modern urban kids with our ancestral kids. When humans lived on dirt floors, spent most of their time outside, ate lots of unwashed food, and, for infants, suckled at dusty breasts, I suspect aluminum intake was considerably higher. We evolved wollowing in dirt. Dirt gots aloominum.

None of those are about either the DTaP or Tdap vaccines. Plus the Geiers are not reputable, the others are quite questionable. Total fail….

… and obviously another sock puppet.

Orac: “PB was good, but he slipped up. (I won’t say how.)”

The only reason I mentioned it was the brain dead start with the brain dead Pharma Shill Gambit. It was cinched when he went into his Aluminati mode (also known as persevering on aluminum content).

doug: “We evolved wollowing in dirt. Dirt gots aloominum.”

Yep! A sign of a good free childhood is having scraped knees by running and playing in the dirt. When I was a kid I had to take a fingernail brush to scrub my knees clean. I think I spent from an age I was too young to remember until at least age twelve with scraped knees. (though sometime in my thirties with a toddler and a baby at a playground I tripped and scraped my knee through my jeans… I had to grab the boys and buy a new pair of jeans at a store because we were staying at the grandparents that night because the floors of our house were being refinished, and I had not packed a spare).

I have a few blackmail pics of my kids being covered in mud. Obviously the sock puppet was never allowed to play in real dirt as a kid, and probably also does not allow his kids to run and play in the dirt. That is terribly sad.

Chris:A sign of a good free childhood is having scraped knees by running and playing in the dirt.

You forgot to mention eating it. I probably ate a fair amount of dirt as a kid, though not as much as younger sibling 1, who liked dirt and rock salt.I’m getting shades of Thingy here, who was also ignorant of child behavior.

A bit late, but as long as we are pointing out differences of alu uptake between ingested and vaccines, I could add that intramuscular injection is not the same as IV. The vaccine content is not immediately distributed into the whole body but will be staying some time on the injection site.

It’s the “directly into the body” of our visitor which make me feel the old canard “directly into the bloodstream” was somewhat invoked.

Eh, it works with wild foxes and the rabies vaccine*, so it should work with humans.

*OK, I don’t think mice are actually involved with the preparation of the rabies-vaccine-laced bait .**
** well, not directly anyway. Wild mice munching the baits don’t count. Unless they get swallowed by a fox afterward.

Is anyone else amused (or surprised) to learn that the Geiers have quietly abandoned their mercury-chelation / expert-witness grift and have moved onto the aluminium-gardasil expert-witness grift? Or that Shoenfeld is providing them with a forum?

WTF is this new page system for comments? How the heck do I know where I stopped reading if a lot come in. I understand for posts with lots of comments it probably helps with reloading, but the fact that the comments re-number from 1 on each page is AWFUL.

Orac – I know you have no control over this, but is there a general place we can express our displeasure?

@amethyst and pgp I was taking a soils class when one of my kiddos was about 9 or 10 months old. I’d just find a patch free of toxic flora and plunk him down. He ate his way through all different kinds of soil.

Whatever the aluminum concentration, SteveJ, I suspect eating it would work itself out via the bowel.

There is one example of aluminum doing it’s inflammatory thing a little bit too much:

Two possible factors for the increase of VAS at this time were the introduction in 1985 of vaccines for rabies and feline leukemia virus (FeLV) that contained aluminum adjuvant, and a law in 1987 requiring rabies vaccination in cats in Pennsylvania. In 1993, a causal relationship between VAS and administration of aluminum adjuvanted rabies and FeLV vaccines was established through epidemiologic methods, and in 1996 the Vaccine-Associated Feline Sarcoma Task Force was formed to address the problem….

Inflammation in the subcutis following vaccination is considered to be a risk factor in the development of VAS, and vaccines containing aluminum were found to produce more inflammation. Furthermore, particles of aluminum adjuvant have been discovered in tumor macrophages.

Gilbert @345: My vet warned me about that when we got my cat. So we rotated which limb got the rabies shot. But I’d rather risk VAS than what happens if your cat bites someone and isn’t up to date on their rabies shot.

Concerned
1) “The absolute risk of postvaccination FS with these vaccine combinations was small.”
2) Many vaccines are associated with a small risk of fever. Presumably when you combine vaccines on one day there is an increase in the risk of sufficient fever to cause FS.
3) “30 FS per 100 000 persons vaccinated” is not a lot.

4) What is the rate of FS associated with influenza, diphtheria, pertussis or tetanus?

Thank you JustaTech. I would agree that most info I have seen as doses increase so does the risk for FS. But Dr. Offet says you can get 10,000 vaccines at once with no adverse effects. And then there are studies like this… http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27160040 Which leads the doctors to try and get as many done at one time to increase uptake and compliance but no one is usually informed of the increased risks of FS due to these increased dosages. What is your opinion?

James Castle what percentage of the people reporting seizures do you think are secretly trying to get VEARS compensation awards. Just curious what you guess would be. Since you obviously assume this might effect the 3.5.

It never crossed my mind that there is an entire community of epileptic babies out there and their parents are taking them to the ER after their vaccinations. Just so that their diagnosis can be contributed to vaccine damage instead of epilepsy. So I guess from the first seizures at home they just don’t go to the doctor or ER and wait till vaccine time. Good job James the average person would never see this as plausible, especially in high enough numbers to effect studies, you are ahead of the curve,

“Page system”? I mean, I started blocking a chunk of the SB wp-content/themes payload after the “Recent Insolence Returned” vanished for me, so I’m basically getting the ~2014 presentation, but even on my phone, I’ve never seen paging.

This one the tested vaccines on pregnant women and did follow up calls 7 days later and 10.8% reported adverse events. That seems high to me to have close to 11% with adverse reaction. But I think they are saying it’s fine because only 11 went to the ER and they ended up ok. Did they follow up after their babies were born? How do I get more info on this study?

Not that this casts doubt on a link between feline sarcoma and vaccination

I’m not going to turn off the killfile to see whatever Timmeh horked up, but FISS is only associated with FeLK and adjuvanted rabies last I heard. There is now an unadjuvanted, three-year, canarypox-vectored rabies vaccine, and FeLK isn’t usually needed for indoor cats.

So, not “vaccination” per se. Indeed,

This to me only would have potential significance if non-tumor macrophages did not contain aluminum particles.

I found an article of an 11 year old boy who had an award from VEARS due to an adverse reaction to HPV. He was left 80% disabled and recieved $140,000.00 and his pro bono attorney got 30% of that. That leaves $90,000 to cover a lifelong brain damaged person. While I guess that is better than nothing it is not a get rich quick deal. These cases are dealt with through arbitration and costs are mitigated through a panel review and awards are routinely substantially less than what would have been awarded before VEARS was established in 1986. Yet they have paid out over 3.5 billion to thousands of claimants. Even so there is still a surplus of over 3 billion in the fund drawing interest awaiting future claims. Currently there are over 70 vaccines on the schedule and .75 cents goes to the fund for each. But there are over 200 new vaccines in the works and awaiting approval to be added to the schedule. And if you add in the new states becomming mandatory and all the extra adults being vaccinated this will add billions to this fund. Maybe it will be enough to cover the claims.

Here is a little math problem you need to do to show us if you understand a few things. Go to the first table and look at the last row that says “Grand Total.” Take the number of vaccines given for the stated time period (2,532,428,541 vaccine doses), and then divide it by the total number of compensated over that time period (2224 compensated claims).

Now you need to tell us two things about the result. Please give us the number that is the ratio of those two values. And then explain what it means.

James to be honest I do not know. When the manufacturers test these the placebos have the same adjuvants so it would be hard to see a difference unless a study could be done where the placebo does not contain the adjuvant. But I am just guessing.

LW: “I wonder why the parents entered into a contingent fee agreement with the attorney”

All the more reason to get the US Court link to the ruling, which even for “unpublished” cases is usually available. The one I posted awarded s $185K lump sum to the parents, and bit less than $20K for lawyer fees. It is in the link I posted.

Chris if I divide the 2.5 billion doses into the the 79 doses currently required on the schedule it gives a total of 32,000,000 people vaccinated. If I divide the number of compensated people by the number vaccinated I get a rate of compensation versus vaccinated of 0.0000695. So this would say that 1 person out of over 130,000 vaccinated would have recieved compensation through this program. Is that what you wanted?

Chris while trying to find the article with the $140,000 reward I found this lawyer page. It list over 350 cases that they have won with the amounts. Would this be included in that 2224 number we had before? If so it would seem weird that this one law firm lists over 15% of the entire national case rewards as their own??? https://www.mctlawyers.com/vaccine-injury/cases/

I think the data in #379 could be used as evidence that vaccines do not cause autism. The CDC says that 1 in 50 are currently on the spectrum. Yet only 1 in 130,000 vaccinated are compensated. And not all of those compensations involve autism. So do you think that the claims of the fact that we are better than we used to be at diagnosis of autism is attributing the rise from 1 in 5000 20 years ago to 1 in 50 and climbing now? What is your opinion?

Come on Narad don’t give up on me yet. I am learning here. I know it is much funnier to bash those that think they know it all when they clearly don’t. But I am willing to admit I know very little and I am learning a lot here. I appreciate it.

Wow! I mean I do not believe that the anti vaccine community even realizes, that of the 2224 cases compensated in the last 7 years more than 1300 of those caswho s was for the freaking flu vaccine. All you every hear about from them is, MMR, HPV and DTaP. The only mention of the flu vaccine is that the Thimerosol Mercury adjuvant was never removed from the flu shot like it was in all the childhood vaccines. Maybe they should just be anti flu. Lol

Wait a minute if the flu shot still has Mercury and they now give the flu shot to pregnant women, can that Mercury get to the fetus developing inside the mother? Or is there like blood placenta barrier or something like that to keep the Thimerosol from getting to the fetus? Has this been tested?

Concerned: “Chris if I divide the 2.5 billion doses into the the 79 doses currently required on the schedule it gives a total of 32,000,000 people vaccinated”

Not the question I asked.

Concerned: “The only mention of the flu vaccine is that the Thimerosol Mercury adjuvant was never removed from the flu shot like it was in all the childhood vaccines.”

Thimerosal is not an adjuvant. There is no adjuvant in any American flu vaccine. Plus at least half of the influenza vaccines have no thimerosal, since they are single dose version. Plus many states, including California, have laws that say children and pregnant women only get vaccines that do not have thimerosal.

The Liberty Beacon is not a PubMed indexed journal, and does not have a reputation for truthfulness. See what I wrote above.

The claim per individual vaccine dosage was 1 claim per 1,138,682 doses given. What this means, when you consider the amount of vaccines given compared to the amount of claims paid during this time period, is that you would be much more likely to be struck by lightning while living in a cave than to win a compensation claim due to an adverse reaction to a vaccine. And further with less than 3500 total claims filled in the time period I would have to assume that either adverse events are grossly under reported or they have been disproportionately represented as much more prevalent than they really are by the anti vaccine community.

Not only is the number of compensations very small, but a large portion of them are from DTP – a vaccine no longer used, or OPV, also not used – and most are via settlement, where you don’t have to actually show causation.

I’m presuming that you are American, I have noticed a trend for Americans to only focus on events in the States.

The rest of the world has been vaccinating too and for quite some time. It might broaden your horizons to look at some figures free from the noise caused by lawyers, the CDC, big Pharma, private healthcare, alt med peddlers and conspiracy sites.

Why not Cuba? Most def not big Pharma, the CDC are not allowed to enter Cuba, the vaccines are free and they would love to find fault with Capitalist medical inventions:
Please google and have a long read:

Vaccine-Related Adverse Events in Cuban Children, 1999–2008
Or remove the spaces at the start and end:
htt p://www.medicc.org/mediccreview/index.php?issue=19&id=237&a=vaht ml

Ah yourself, you are dead wrong here. Everyone knows that The Man, is a secret cabal of Illuminati and powerful families.

Strong proud leaders like Putin and Casto aren’t The Man, well yes they are men, obviously. But not an all powerful figure, that clings to power by harsh repression of any dissent! Well erm, hows about, not The Man, when it comes to profiting from causing disease with vaccines and then making profit of curing those people and then hiding the truth?

But Dr. Offet [sic] says you can get 10,000 vaccines at once with no adverse effects.

False. One of the fastest ways to show that you haven’t actually done any investigation on vaccines worthy of the name is to repeat this canard.

Let me give you an analogy. You obviously like your guns, right? And I’d bet dollars to donuts you fear some shadowy, nebulous force of “Anti-Gun Nuts” who, in your imaginings, will do anything to take your guns away. You believe that, right? (In the real world, there are real people who have real concerns about guns being too readily available, based on real evidence, but here we’re talking about the Anti-Gun Nuts fantasy where their entire lives revolve around “We must deprive gun owners of their God-given rights!!” – you know, the way a seven-year-old fantasizes secret council meetings of grown-ups who sit around and calculate new ways to advance the Prevent Tommy From Having Fun agenda.)

Okay. So suppose the argument that some AGN comes up with, for why you should surrender your gun, is that you will get lead poisoning from it. Because, says this bright spark, there’s lead in bullets, right? And there’s always some discharge into the surrounding air when you fire a gun! And that discharge must contain some lead, and you must breathe at least some of it in, and presto, lead poisoning!

How would you respond? Would you calculate how much lead would actually enter your system each time you fired a bullet? Would you multiply that figure by a couple of orders of magnitude, just to make it clear that you aren’t fudging the math in the direction you want to go? Would you divide that overestimated-for-safety figure by the best figures available on how much lead exposure it actually takes to produce lead poisoning?

If you did, you might say something like “Your ‘too many bullets, too soon’ idea doesn’t hold water. Even taking very generous assumptions about how much lead you take in from firing one bullet, you wouldn’t reach the point of lead poisoning until you’d fired about 100,000 bullets.”

And you know what would happen then? Your words would be twisted beyond all recognition. AGNs would pretend you said “Everyone should fire 100,000 bullets! That’s what the pro-gun shill Concerned said! He said you could fire 100,000 bullets every day and you wouldn’t get a hand cramp or lose any hearing from the noise!” You never said any of that. What you said is that one specific harm that the AGN said was a danger that everyone needed to worry about, wasn’t. But you said something they could twist, and now that twisted version will spread like wildfire. Pretty soon, you’ll see people claiming you said “That crazy pro-gun shill says you can’t get harmed even if you’re standing in front of 100,000 bullets! Hahaha, what a moron!!! I’d like to see HIM standing in front of 100,000 bullets!!!”

How do you feel about those AGNs, Concerned? Do you look at them as decent and intelligent people? You responded to their far-fetched fearmongering with calm and reason – and they turned around and LIED about what you said. Do you like those Anti-Gun Nuts who are so eager to pursue their Holy Cause, they’ll tell lies to justify that cause?

If you continue to claim “Dr. Offit says you can get 10,000 vaccines at once with no ill effects,” then you’re exactly on the same moral level as those AGNs. Might be a good idea for you to acknowledge you were wrong. You think?

There are several types of adjuvants. Some of the most common adjuvants include aluminium hydroxide, aluminium phosphate and calcium phosphate.

Veterinarian Patricia Jordan, states that the World Health Organization named aluminum hydroxide, a component of most of the currently used veterinary vaccines, a grade 3 out of 4 carcinogen, with 4 being the most carcinogenic.

I’m not seeing much about such fibrosarcomas in humans but I’d bet they occure even if usually benign or of good prognosis. The kids will be alright so long as the administrators of the vax doesn’t stab them in the interscapular space.

Don’t really know, but at a guess. There’s the trade embargo, I pretty sure that for the Rotavirus one, the patent is held in the states.

There is also a cost/ benefit calculation used in developing nations and ones with a national health service, I’ve read a few, they tend to coldly look at the numbers that get ill and if the cost of vaccination is less than the cost of care, then they’ll vaccinate. That could be it, Cuba’s not known to be rich.

As far as the comment above about Offit and 10,000 I found this from Orac.
Let’s see what Paul Offit actually said….
“Children have an enormous capacity to respond safely to challenges to the immune system from vaccines,” says Dr. Offit. “A baby’s body is bombarded with immunologic challenges – from bacteria in food to the dust they breathe. Compared to what they typically encounter and manage during the day, vaccines are literally a drop in the ocean.” In fact, Dr. Offit’s studies show that in theory, healthy infants could safely get up to 10,000 vaccines at once.

The bottom line: It’s safe to give your child simultaneous vaccines or vaccine combinations, such as the five-in-one vaccine called Pediarix, which protects against hepatitis B, polio, tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis (also known as whooping cough. Equally important, vaccines are as effective given in combination as they are given individually.

Nope, nothing ominous there at all. Dr. Offit was simply pointing out that babies’ immune systems can handle far more antigens than are in any vaccines or combination of vaccines presently administered. I rather suspect he probably regrets using that exact turn of phrase, though, because it’s been a favorite whipping boy of anti-vaccinationists ever since he first said it back in 2005. If you don’t believe me, try Googling “Paul Offit 10,000 vaccines” or “Paul Offit 100,000 vaccines” sometime, although this post gives a flavor of the sorts of uses to which Dr. Offit’s quote has been used by anti-vaccine activists.http://respectfulinsolence.com/2008/07/28/more-execrable-journalism-about-vaccines/

I would say he said this to help to lessen fears of people that were worried about combining multiple vaccines that had not been tested together.

This would be like in the analogy above that the guy saying you can fire the 100,000 lead bullets and breath the air with no harm was actually a lead representative of the bullet manufacturer and he sat as a chair person of the government entity that regulates the safety and efficacy of the bullet manufacturer and he then uses his position to suppose this statement to help his employers on both sides with this statement without testing or peer reviewed science to prove this assumption. All the while noting that due to his position his opinion will hold much weight in the public and media arena and can help market share for the companies involved which includes himself. And help the government agencies with their uptake rates that ensures their year over year budgets to purchase these bullets…lol

This would be like in the analogy above that the guy saying you can fire the 100,000 lead bullets and breath the air with no harm was actually a lead representative of the bullet manufacturer and he sat as a chair person of the government entity that regulates the safety and efficacy of the bullet manufacturer and he then uses his position to suppose this statement to help his employers on both sides with this statement without testing or peer reviewed science to prove this assumption. All the while noting that due to his position his opinion will hold much weight in the public and media arena and can help market share for the companies involved which includes himself. And help the government agencies with their uptake rates that ensures their year over year budgets to purchase these bullets…lol

Not in any meaningful sense, no.

So now we have a teachable moment. The Offitt 100,000 claim is and always was bullshit,what he said is abundantly clear, as is the way it has been wilfully distorted by anti-vaxxers.

When one is presented with conclusive evidence that a statement is wrong, one has two main options:

Looks like you went for 2. That’s the standard approach of course, but it ensures that when you are wrong, you will not only remain wrong, but you will become more wrong over time.

Anti-vax is a quasi-religious ideology, it does not adapt to facts. Vaccine science is, well, science. All conclusions are provisional, all evidence is open to rigorous test and debate. And when science finds itself to be wrong, it admits the fact. Have you read Offitt’s “The Cutter Incident”? It was not antivaxers who identified the issue with the polio vaccine, it was not antivaxers who fixed it, and it certainly was not antivaxers who moved on beyond it to bring polio to the brink of eradication.

Being open tot he possibility that you are wrong is the most basic essential of good science. That’s why Andy Wakefield’s science is junk, and that’s why you are failing to persuade in this discussion. Immutable certainties are for religion, not science.

Concerned: “In fact, Dr. Offit’s studies show that in theory, healthy infants could safely get up to 10,000 vaccines at once.”

No, they don’t. And he has never said this. His statement (twisted and misrepresented endlessly by antivaxers) related only to the infant’s immune system being able to handle the antigenic stimulus contained in that many vaccine. Offit never proposed giving anyone 10,000 vaccines at once or suggested that would be safe and/or desirable.

“I rather suspect he probably regrets using that exact turn of phrase”

If anything, he regrets that antivaxers are so stupid and/or devious that they’d twist his words in that fashion.

Veterinarian Patricia Jordan, states that the World Health Organization named aluminum hydroxide, a component of most of the currently used veterinary vaccines, a grade 3 out of 4 carcinogen, with 4 being the most carcinogenic.

Goofle shows the claim to be circulating through the whackosphere, passed from loon to loon in the manner of a well-sucked lolly, and endowed with the status of holy scripture. No-one seems to have a primary source. But if some true believer states rather than just repeats something she read on the Intertubes, well, it must be true.

Concerned, I just want to be sure that you understand the difference between febrile seizures (caused by a fever) and seizures caused by epilepsy. They are two very different things, with very different causes and outcomes.

This would be like in the analogy above that the guy saying you can fire the 100,000 lead bullets and breath the air with no harm was actually a lead representative of the bullet manufacturer [useless stupidity snipped]

So basically, you’re not only not honest enough to admit “okay, Dr. Offit did NOT say what I claimed he said,” you don’t even have the intellectual courage to deal with the analogy honestly. In the analogy, sir, you are the one trying to debunk an exaggerated scenario of harm.

Are you trying to tell us you aren’t intellectually capable of imagining yourself on that side of the situation? If so, then why would anyone think you intellectually capable of evaluating vaccines realistically?

Or are you just so craven that you look and say “Wow, people who try to inject calm reasoning into discussions tainted by screaming hysteria sure have a difficult path – so I’ll just take the cowardly, safe route and side with the screaming hysteria-spreaders”?

Concerned, serving as human centipede to Joey’s earlier effluvia:But Dr. Offet says you can get 10,000 vaccines at once with no adverse effects…
As far as the comment above about Offit and 10,000 I found this from Orac.

Let’s see what Paul Offit actually said [… .]
In fact, Dr. Offit’s studies show that in theory, healthy infants could safely get up to 10,000 vaccines at once.

Reformatting.
Concerned, serving as human centipede to Joey’s earlier effluvia:But Dr. Offet says you can get 10,000 vaccines at once with no adverse effects…
As far as the comment above about Offit and 10,000 I found this from Orac.

Let’s see what Paul Offit actually said [… .]
In fact, Dr. Offit’s studies show that in theory, healthy infants could safely get up to 10,000 vaccines at once.

So this statement never came from Paul Offit. And it was not twisted by anti vaccine groups but rather used by pro vaccine entities such as the children’s hospital of Philidelphia and used just as I supposed earlier to convince people with fear of multiple vaccine injections at the same time. This was then reported many and used many times by the media and became attributed to Offit not because it was made up by anti Vaxxed to help their cause but because it was created and used by pro vax facilities to help their programs.

“But it should be the least of your worries. “Children have an enormous capacity to respond safely to challenges to the immune system from vaccines,” says Dr. Offit. “A baby’s body is bombarded with immunologic challenges – from bacteria in food to the dust they breathe. Compared to what they typically encounter and manage during the day, vaccines are literally a drop in the ocean.” In fact, Dr. Offit’s studies show that in theory, healthy infants could safely get up to 100,000 vaccines at once.”

In biochemistry and biology, there are “signalling pathways” that have multiple steps connected in a chain. There can be many steps in a signaling pathway. Cytokines often act this way. So, when we say that “IL-6 causes autism”, it could mean that IL-6 acts directly, or that the IL-6 triggers something else that causes autism.

“The new discovery is that IL-17a acts downstream of IL-6 to cause autism. In other words, IL-17a production is an intermediate step between IL-6 production and autism. So, Choi et al provides both a confirmation and extension of IL-6-autism causality. No wonder this paper was published in one of the most important scientific journals in the world.

“But it should be the least of your worries. “Children have an enormous capacity to respond safely to challenges to the immune system from vaccines,” says Dr. Offit. “A baby’s body is bombarded with immunologic challenges – from bacteria in food to the dust they breathe. Compared to what they typically encounter and manage during the day, vaccines are literally a drop in the ocean.” In fact, Dr. Offit’s studies show that in theory, healthy infants could safely get up to 100,000 vaccines at once.”

No the statement did not come from Paul Offit. It was written by Beth Howard. She got a fair bit right in her article, but got this bit wrong.

The actual quote by Offit is from this paper and states that an infant’s immune system could theoretically respond to the antigens in 10,000 vaccines at once.

There was never a suggestion that anyone should be given 10,000 vaccines at a time.

Well let me see. Joey did. And then Concerned did. So there do seem to be people suggesting it is a possible activity.

We all know that Ofit is sometimes misquoted, But Beth Howard did said that “healthy infants could safely get up to 100,000 vaccines at once”

This is absurd. How many people here actually believe this???

That is hard to tell. I don’t as I pointed out. Howard made an error in her interpretation. I also pointed out the significant difference between the various vaccine quotes and what Offit actually wrote, which was about antigens.

And Offit did say that: “ Compared to what they typically encounter and manage during the day, vaccines are literally a drop in the ocean”

This analogy is absurd. The immunogenic potential of vaccines are on a much larger scale than he is implying.

This analogy is absurd. The immunogenic potential of vaccines are on a much larger scale than he is implying.

It’s true that vaccines are meant to induce a strong immunogenic response.
But that Offit – and any biologist who spent some time on immunology – is saying, is that there is a continuous background of immunological challenges happening every day. Stuff we got with our food, from our food, stuff we inhale from dust to pollen to all forms of perfumes, plus the stuff we got from the occasional paper cut or the odd chainsaw accident…
And all the viruses and bacteria which are piggybacking on all the above-mentioned vehicles.

If vaccines were compared to a 100m-sprint, most, in not all of us are doing daily a 20km-walk, at the minimum, with the occasional sprint from time to time.

Most of the foreign things our body encounter are harmless, and quickly disposed of (except for allergies)
But you will have a hard time convincing me that the dead (or almost dead) pathogens in a vaccine present a challenge on a “much higher scale” than, by example, catching a good old rhinovirus on the bus and spending the the next weeks with overacting sinuses*.

Anyone that implies otherwise must be a few neurons short of autistic.

As I understand it, autistic people may have troubles with analogies. So, I suppose your insult is factually true.
OTOH, this is an insult, and using autistic people as the bogeyman. So, I’ll just say:
Stay classy, sir.

@James Castle: That would be a good trick, since our good HDB is across the pond from where my ISP is located. But thank you for the compliment. I sincerely appreciate being put into the same league of snark.

(BTW – our gracious host can well confirm my identity. I don’t know if he’s ever met HDB on his trips to Europe).

Some people can pick-up any clothes and look good in it, some other don’t. It helps when the clothes were tastefully chosen.
I don’t worry. If either MI Dawn or HDB borrows from the other’s dress cabinet, I am sure they will look awesome.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26908667
Only 68% effective the first year then drops to 8.9% in less than 4 years. Routine DTaP did not prevent pertussis outbreaks. So that litle protection remained 2-3 years after vaccination.
Now according to this study,
(Because the effectiveness of diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis (DTaP) vaccine wanes substantially after the fifth dose at ages 4 to 6 years, there is a growing cohort of adolescents who rely on tetanus toxoid, reduced diphtheria toxoid, and acellular pertussis (Tdap) for protection against pertussis. Yet despite high Tdap vaccine coverage among adolescents, California experienced large pertussis outbreaks in 2010 and 2014. We investigated Tdap vaccine effectiveness (VE) and waning within Kaiser Permanente Northern California among adolescents exclusively vaccinated with DTaP vaccines.)
The media coverage Insaw on the outbreaks of pertussis during this time was mostly blamed on the anti Vaxxed children of which they said California had too many of. This coupled with the measles out break of 40 children who later were found to have been vaccinated with the MMR, helped usher in the plan for mandatory vaccinations in California. I find it appalling that this study was never mentioned in the media as they were pushing their issue forward. What do you scientist think? I mean it is from your glorious Pubmed.

Wow.
Never before I have come across such a shill fest as this website, which is clearly full of industry flunkies, apparatchiks and enablers.
This is just one great wank for all the medical/pharmaceutical industrial complex hacks.
I read a Dr bollocks (Really, thats his name?. . . That’s funny, but appropriate) disparage Naturopathy, when he and his fellow doctors, are the ones that supply me with customers.
As a practising Naturopath, most of my customers come to me for 2 reasons.
1st, the conventional doctor has not cured them of their disease, and only exacerbated the problems by treating the symptoms.
And 2nd, I have to repair the body, because their doctors have given them far too many pharmaceutical drugs, which have created chronic and debilitating side-effects.
And they call me a quack??
At least I don’t intentionally harm people, by giving them dangerous, and deadly remedies.
So much for the Hippocratic oath in the medical profession.

Actual reasons customers (interesting that Peter views them as such, not as patients or people in need of quality healthcare) go to naturopaths:

1) swayed by deceptive advertising
2) prone to naturalistic fallacy
3) have conditions that can be managed by evidence–based medicine but which in the patient’s perception are not optimally treated and who is looking for woo, new drugs and exciting placebos.
4) are mentally ill
5) combination of all or part of the above.

Actual reasons customers (interesting that Peter views them as such, not as patients or people in need of quality healthcare) go to naturopaths:

4) are mentally ill

What’s funny is that even the flat-earth Jesus freak conspiracy theorist I met in the psych ward (no joke) wasn’t anti-vax. (Nice guy*, actually, wrote me a long goodbye letter. With many scriptural references.)

*Is soon getting married to the woman who swallowed a screw, who is indeed a nice lady. Pysch ward romances** are probably not to be encouraged, but I know of at least one that worked out well.

**I think that the time I sleepwalked out of my room and kissed M. Mendez doesn’t count. I have since run into her several times around the hood and at DSHS; mainly I am happy that she wasn’t sent to the state hospital, where the same shrink had wanted to send both of us.

One might ask why one conspiracy theorist is locked up for being crazy and another is not; the answer, I suppose, is that one is a danger to himself or others and the other is not.

So why aren’t people promoting naturopathy over legitimate medical treatment not locked up?* It would only be fair. I say round ’em all up, with the anti-vax loons, and send them off to the state hospital. Whether the danger comes from a length of rope or prescribing honey and cinnamon for sepsis shouldn’t matter.

I should be able to think about robbing the candy-store every day without being guilty of a crime. I mean, who doesn’t think about wading through piles of free candy with pretty ladies wearing fur coats!

Agreed, but to be fair, I had taken things to the point of action. Given that most of the people in the “treatment and evaluation center” had come in from jails or emergency departments, I would guess they had as well.

Although there were people there who were simply suicidal and hadn’t done anything but tell somebody about it. My friend Mendez was actually there because she told somebody she had been feeling homicidal and was then suicidal, which is the wrong thing to tell somebody, but still, she hadn’t done anything.